


Rediscovery: A Shared Hell (Insect that Shuns the Light)

by hauntedshoes



Series: Crossroads [3]
Category: The Centricide (Webseries)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Backstory, Blood and Injury, Body Dysphoria, Character Study, Deconstruction, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Nazbol and Posadist are former college students, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding, can be viewed as platonic?, first and third person, i don't know how else to put it, nazbol is deep for reasons, only a little authunity but tagged anyway, people turning into political ideologies, romance is not the main focus, they travel through ideology land hell together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedshoes/pseuds/hauntedshoes
Summary: On a lonely day, Posadist feels himself becoming distant from the world and himself.Begging for entrance into the elite group of the 'Political Wackies' Nazbol walks into his home and demands some attention from the alien entity finds himself sharing stories with a stranger who would listen.Turns out, Posadist and Nazbol share a lot more in common with one another than they might have thought.
Relationships: Posadist/Nazbol, authunity
Series: Crossroads [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1856995
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	1. Isolated Places

**Author's Note:**

> Although this is in my series section you don't need to read any of the previous works to enjoy this one!

The old Posadists had left behind quite a mess. There used to be any number of them in the World of Ideas, they weren’t the largest group by any means, but they were beings of chaos as one might guess. Most had speculated that they had fired an actual nuke and had managed to kill off a large swatch of their own population that way. Although it was a more likely story that the Posadist’s had died off or deconstructed themselves into oblivion.

Despite this, they had still left an entire area of the World of Ideas almost uninhabitable. Their little alien/cockroach minds needed some specific conditions to apparently thrive. Something about the radiation had made them feel comfortable. Of course, when they had all seemed to disappear, as many ideologies eventually do, but nobody wanted to go in there and claim the former area. Ideologies couldn’t die from radiation damage, mostly speaking. But radiation damage wasn’t pleasant. It was unpleasant enough so that not even the other AuthLefts wanted to go and clean it up and repurpose it. Even if they never expected another Posadist to appear there one day.

That and secretly, a lot of them kinda missed the Posadists. When someone from your own quadrant did seem to vanish, it was still a little sad, regardless of if they all believed they could speak to dolphins or not. Keeping their area clear and roughly how they had left, it could serve as a shrine to the AuthLefts former comrade, no matter how wacky.

These little ‘shrines’ left abandoned by other ideologies weren’t exclusive to any particular alignment. They were kept away, unvisited. Small corners of the World of Ideas that were never touched and nobody lived in. They still existed physically, even if nobody dared to disturb them. Because of the lack of disturbance and nobody contributing any added symbolism to them, they became static. They were places lost to time imbued with the ideas that they inspired however long ago.

Of course, an ideology which was completely dead to the World of Ideas could not go on and create more of themselves. The conventional way that ideologies would go and repopulate the World of Ideas would be to wander around on Earth as spirits and convert humans into believing in what they did just as much as themselves over the majority of their lifetime. They would then be accepted by the World of Ideas and the many strings keeping it together.

But not everyone who lived in the World of Ideas was invited into it from humble origins.

If ideologies were to go to Earth and make more of themselves, then there would have to be gateways in and out the World of Ideas. Most Ideologies left through the ‘lights of the sky’. Taking a long climb up (or elevator trip) until they hit ‘the barrier’ in which they reach through, sacrifice the physical of their bodies and enter the material world. However, not all of ‘the barrier’ was stable.

Not only would the barrier sometimes rip through random areas of the World of Ideas away from the lights of the sky and sometimes, even in the material world. These little ‘rips’ between the two worlds would sometimes cause humans to fall through into the World of Ideas without any preparation or prior knowledge of the place even existing in their minds.

It was expected that the locations that these tears, in reality, would be associated with places that strongly resonated with the ideas that they lead to. However, nobody really knew, in fact, it was just as likely that any random location on the planet could be a portal to the World of Ideas – significant to it or not. Earth, with no reason or concrete symbolism to hold it together, didn’t quite know what to make of the World of Ideas and thus distributed its contents with no rhythm. Therefore, even untouchable, near ancient areas of the World of Ideas with no significance left could be found by these humans with no intent on their part.

This is how old Ideologies came back - the idea revived by a new container to hold it.

Even if these areas were disregarded, they still belonged to the World of Ideas and its symbolism ran through it even when undisturbed. It was a likely eventuality that an unwitting human would simply fall into these shrines by mistake. The World of Ideas had no mind it was driven only by keeping the symbolic thread of its nature alive. It could not risk falling apart by having that did not fit inside its system.

If a human were to fall through into the World of Ideas, they would be barred from ever escaping. If you wanted a more Earthly metaphor, sort of like entropy. Tearing apart of the non-consistent symbolism in those that entered its domain and creating a cohesive whole again. A human who happened to fall into the World of Ideas would never be able to return to their former lives again. Not even if they had an insane level of dedication to a political or philosophical concept to the point where it could almost be shared with the World of Ideas’ residence. The confined rarely had control over their fate. They had the smallest of chances to run to a place which reflected themselves more deeply before they would be completely overcome by whatever the World of Ideas moulded them into or sometimes where they ended up.

On a fateful day in the middle of the 2010s, Posadism came back.

Not that it wanted to.

Not that he wanted to.

He wasn’t the only one who had been reborn to drag another ideology back from the claws of death, though, as he was about to find out.

-

When you fell into the World of Ideas, you were not supposed to find the transition into its mechanisms painful or memorable. In most cases, it would take a few months to fully become an ideology or other concept once you entered the World of Ideas by mistake. It would most often happen in a way you wouldn’t even notice. It would appear as the natural adaption to your environment to the point where all your former human memories became unimportant figments or sparse thoughts in what would otherwise be a flood of concepts.

At least, that was the most common occurrence, and it’s how the majority of those that lived in the Word of Ideas assumed that’s how it happened. In reality, the World of Ideas was a lot more fickle. Not random, the World of Ideas was anything but random. Nobody knew the reasoning it had for letting some memories, sometimes even a lot slip through causing the feeling that one had left an entire life behind and more depressingly that they could never ever return. At other times it would take only a few hours for the transformation to complete. Thirdly it could range from empowering to painful. Being a lot stronger than humans, ideologies, and other concepts could also withstand a lot more pain than any human could. Encountering the kind of harm that an ideology might feel with a shell that was still mostly human was, in all reasonable measures, a horrifying experience.

The conclusion that most drew was that the World of Ideas was desperate for some people and sought to actively reject others. Not that it could reject those that fell through unintentionally. So the transference would represent itself as a clash between the World of Ideas and the human’s own psyche fighting against each other. Allegory turning inward, allegory working to reshape you, to tear you apart.

Posadist couldn’t say that the allegory had torn him apart. The physical aspects of his change in appearance was a simple consequence of his circumstance. Posadist was unsure if he was jealous of the other Ideologies for at least looking like themselves or look down on them as Posadist was able to live to his ideal to the highest degree.

Posadist was the conflicted sort, he wanted to destroy the world to save everyone, and he couldn’t quite tell if he was a human, an ideology or an alien. The feeling would oscillate day by day sometimes he felt more alien, others more human, and others more like a genuine Political Ideology. Posadist was unsure if the oscillation came from his interactions with others or some that only lay with him.

Either way, Posadist couldn’t feel as if he could always be open with the Wackies, not in the way that he was. The days where he could fully embrace his nature made him feel powerful in awe of himself almost, as he expected others to be. However, he would also encounter days where it seemed that all his confidence was taken from him, he didn’t belong anywhere, and he wasn’t even at home in his own body. Sometimes, Posadist would even hide away from the other Wackies in fear of them not taking him seriously anymore without his careless and cheery attitude.

Posadist would hide alone and apply various levels of white powder onto his face in a desperate attempt to look as he did when he lived as a human. It was never enough to cover the fiery glowing energy of his body. The fact that he had an almost perfect image of his former self on those days further drove the knowledge that he would never get back what he once had into his skull. At the same time, he was also kind of amazed that he could go from idealising his form to wanting to cut off his antenna with a cleaver.

Although Posadist had thought that his quiet room below some corner of the AuthLeft sector was safe, that it would be forever as lonely as he was, it wouldn’t be for long. Whilst he was busy trying to pull off his wings. He immediately stopped trying to tear at his flesh and started to laugh to himself instead as he heard someone banging on the door. “C-come in?!”

“Oh, wow! Posadist! You actually answered now lemme in!”

Posadist recognised that voice, it was the Nazbol.

Talking about ‘not belonging anywhere’ Nazbol wasn’t Wacky enough to join Posadist and the others, but he wasn’t exactly coherent either. Posadist had assumed that he had been rejected by both groups and had now come running back because he had no other option. Posadist laughed again, he knew he was right.

“Let yourself in, Nazbol!”

Nazbol kept knocking until he somehow pushed the door down. Posadist wasn’t surprised.

“Oh, hey, there you go!” Posadist looked away from his mirror and shot the Nazbol a grin with his pointed teeth.

Nazbol’s feet stamped as he travelled down the steps and into the interior of Posadist’s spacey bunker-like home. Posadist had designed his space to be all metal and lights. It was like his own little spaceship. It was safe and cosy but still cold at the same time. Being made partly of nuclear energy, it’s not like Posadist needed any heating in the house. The World of Ideas, even for the number of unusual ideas that inhabited it, still kept to fairly conventional human housing standards. Posadist had to build his own home around feeling the odd one out, his alien nature, much to his own dissatisfaction.

By Nabol’s searching eyes, Posadist guessed that he had never seen a place like this before. As expected, at least he wasn’t passing his judgement. To tell the truth, aside from the occasional trip to the Nuclear wastes, this was the only place Posadist could really feel comfortable.

“Hey, Hey, Posadist, so have you maybe, gone back on your decision to like…” Nazbol trailed off as he started to repeat himself.

“No, of course not, Nazbol, you’re still not a Wacky, and you should stop trying to be.”

Despite being refused entry into the elite Wacky group, Nazbol was showing no intent on leaving the room, in fact, he was drawing closer and closer to Posadist to the point that Nazbol was right next to him, close to his mirror.

The two of them were now staring at one another in the eye. Posadist wondered if his glowing yellow pits of eyes were hurting Nazbol’s tiny human-like brain with his alien lights. Then again, NazBol didn’t have the most normal kind of eyes either. Eyes of two different colours, one was bright red, and the other was bright blue, they were ever so slightly slit like a bird. Posadist wasn’t aware of how… off, Nazbol looked. Posadist should have guessed that someone who had an air of such power would be more idea than person.

“That’s a shame, huh, Posadist? Mind if I look around this place for a bit and all?” Nazbol’s head bobbed, and he gave a massive grin showing off tiny fangs that sat inside of his mouth.

Posadist laughed awkwardly, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to get rid of him now he was poking around. Posadist didn’t want to admit it, but he kind of admired Nazbol, for what he did know about him anyway. Sure, he was annoying, but he was only annoying because he was persistent - an admirable trait for any ideology. Posadist could only keep up some of that persistence when he didn’t want to rip himself apart.

Nazbol jumped around the tiny pseudo-spaceship with vigour. Posadist was scared that his large purple coat – kind of like the one some of the other AuthLefts would wear – would brush against all of his precious esoteric knickknacks and knock them over. Nazbol hummed to himself as he hurried around. “Hmmm, can’t say I’ve seen any of this stuff before but I am not an alien, I am just a little Nazbol.”

Posadist tried his best to cover the powder and other more, harmful tools that he had below his mirror. There was a chance that Nazbol would have seen them already and just hadn’t said anything yet. Some of the ‘weaponry’ that Posadist had recently used were still dirty too. The bright orange alien blood was rather difficult to clean off of knives and the like. Having to stare at the glowing, pulsing stains were much easier to stomach when Posadist was having one of those days where he was fully comfortable with his extra-terrestrial anatomy. Posadist was going through the opposite right now, who he used to be before the World of Ideas, that image, was solid inside of his mind.

The former Posadist, who wasn’t even a Posadist, who didn’t even care about any of that stuff, he missed him.

“So what is a  _ true wacky  _ like you doing in your spare time? I’m guessing someone who’s oh-so wacky, like I’m not, must be a busy, busy person, yes?”

Posadist leant back as he realised that Nazbol was looking at him again. “Yes, so very busy.”

Nazbol nodded.

“Why are you even staying here so long, don’t you want to clear off by now? I did tell you.”

Nazbol stomped his foot on the floor. “No, I don’t think that I will.”

Posadist grew nervous, even though it was clear Nazbol wasn’t trying to scare him. He could have got Nazbol to clear off by chasing him by now, but he didn’t have the energy to do that. Posadist’s brain distant from his body, and he was aware of it. He continued to huddle around his tools and block them from Nazbol’s view.

“What were you really doing anyway.” Nazbol blinked, and his tense face softened. “Like, really, you have a sad voice like something is wrong… this isn’t a normal funny Posadist voice, is it?”

Posadist felt his antenna drop, once again reminding him that they were they and he couldn’t get rid of them. The things were so damn expressive that Posadist couldn’t really hide it when he truly felt.

“Well, what do you expect me to tell you?” Posadist frowned a little, he realised how much all that smiling had hurt his mouth.

“Nothing.” The Nazbol’s eyes flashed. “I just recognise the feeling you know, you’re all alone in the world, nobody to confide in? Existing in two places at once, that kind of thing?” Posadist saw that Nazbol was moving his hand towards his shoulder. Nazbol was surprisingly gentle, he put no force onto Posadist and even managed to withstand the warm power of Posadist’s body.

“I… I… I…”

Nazbol’s pointed teeth poked through what he was trying to show as a comforting grin.

_ Why would Nazbol of all people be trying to comfort him? Why did he have to come in now! _

“Do you mind if I, we, sit down and just kinda talk, I wanna know some stuff.”

“Some stuff?” Posadist questioned, still surprised that Nazbol was touching his shoulder without so much as jolting.

“I want to absolute dump all of my feelings onto you in a totally unironic manner because I’m utterly convinced that you’re the only person who will listen and maybe vaguely understand.”

Posadist gulped, but now he was being seemingly genuine and wanted to be around Posadist for reasons other to call him out for his weird thing for nuclear weapons he didn’t have the heart to tell Nazbol to leave,

“You can sit on the encapsulating rocket device,” said Posadist, referring to his bed.

The mirror might have cracked by now as Posadist continued to lean up against it. He felt it ruffle and struggle against the fire and strength of his body. If the glass were to twist beyond recognition it would have still held Posadist’s appearance, it wouldn’t have made it any less intolerable.

The so-called ‘bed’ was small and compact. Shaped like a metal rocket with a pillow at one end and no sheets to cover it. It sat at a higher point in the room with a set of stairs leading up to it. Nazbol had taken to sitting on it with his legs crossed, clearly comfortable, probably more comfortable than Posadist was when he tried to sleep on the damn thing.

“Good, good, can I start by explaining that by the look on your face and then the almost uncalled for revival of your ideas on the Earthly plane that you weren’t exactly invited here, were you? No, no.”

Shuffling between the mirror and pointed apparatus behind him, Posadist would find no way to relax as he would now, almost surely be forced to listen to Nazbol ramble on and on about nonsense with no way for Posadist to tell if he was ironic or not.

“Do you have those words in plain English, Lil’Nazbol.”

Nazbol chucked as he heard his nickname being called out. “It means you’re not from here and I know that. It’s okay, I’m not from here either!”

_ Not from here? Nazbol didn’t look like any kind of alien. He had really weird features, but being slightly animalistic wasn’t uncommon for very powerful ideologies or even other concepts. Unless Nazbol meant… _

_ Of course, Nazbol meant that… what else would he mean? _

“Duh, I’m not from here!” Posadist shook off any of the weird feelings that the question gave him.

“Most of them, yes, including that stupid Nazi and Communist who keep rejecting me, came here willingly. This is what they wanted – to become the essence of what they cared about oh so so much! But not me, I was chosen for this role! The World of Ideas looked upon me and said that this had to be done!”

Posadist half understood what Nazbol was saying, but he could tell that he was bitter about it.

“Had to be done? You say like I’m here for a reason.”

_ How much memory did Nazbol have?  _ Posadist wondered if Nazbol had remembered most of his human experiences. Posadist had the sense that he didn’t.  _ Surely, he would be less comfortable with his form, nay, existence, if he had more of his human memories?  _

“Earth has no reason, right?”

“No reason? Psk. It has less than no reason for existing!”

“Exactly!”

“Purposeless capitalist green ball…”

“Of course!”

The two of them burst out giggling.

“But you see, everything here, it exists because it must.” Nazbol continued. “But we had no choice, the World of Ideas decided what our utopias should be. It put you here and me” - Nabol did some weird upward-pointing gestures with his hand - “all the way over there. But that is okay, that is where I belong now… it’s…” His eyes winced as if he was trying to hold back tears between smiles.

“You look, uncomfortable.”

“Sure it’s good to be off that gross green capitalist ball, but you know, I miss it a little, and I don’t think – I don’t think I was so alone there eh…” The Nazbol folded in his knees and hugged them close to his chest.

“Alone?”

Posadist hadn’t been alone during his uh, transformation, that much he did know. There was at least a couple, AuthLeft figures around him; however, they had both fled once Posadist’s full power had been reached. Of course, someone slowly becoming obsessed with obliterating everything would not be comfortable to be around, especially when they didn’t understand their feelings quite yet.

“Yeah. It was the most secluded place ever, the place that the World of Ideas. The place that had shut away! I had it all to myself, it was all mine! I kinda wanna know if you can…”

“Me? It sounds like you speak of a place… worse than the Nuclear waste of my homeland?”

“Of course, it was worse! So much worse! Worse, and I’m sure it’s worse.”

Posadist couldn’t tell if Nazbol was exaggerating.

“In fact, I will tell you about it now, so glad I managed to rope you into this conversation, no escape! Now we will compare our zany histories, for fun, yes?”

Posadist was unsure of how he felt, he was at the same time, frightened and feeling sorry for the crazy Lil’ Nazbol.


	2. Cold

Nazbol

My memory was fuzzy as ever, but I clung on with blood and tears and flesh to what I had gone through.

_ Let’s just say, if you’ve ever wondered what if feels like to be hated, utterly reviled by the World of Ideas, you’ve come to the right Nazbol. _

The right ‘to be’ Nazbol, in that circumstance.

I was the first of the last and the last of the first, to put it dramatically. Like an ouroboros fuck that was unaware that it was chewing its own tail, I was unaware of my own violent destiny. Not that it was a supposedly bad destiny, not now, not even if had to hurt me to get me there.

I had to have been minding my own business that day and not doing much else. The World of Ideas gives us no warning, after all. Its whims not even worthy of study had gotten to be in a way I, and none of the others had expected. I think I must have been in college at that time like I can remember if I was on campus or not though. The World of Ideas has no collages or universities for better or worse. I can’t remember what I was studying either, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t politics. As an Ideology now, I understand everything I need to anyway.

I hadn’t heard of a ‘Nazbol’ in any sense of the word before I ended up here in this glorious shit pile. I wished that I had done, studied on some kind weird politics course and maybe given myself a basic understanding of whatever the fuck was going to happen to me but low and behold whoever or whatever inside that other dimension (quote on quote: The World of Ideas).

_ Did Nazbol’s have a home? _

_ Apparently now they did. _

_ I was forced to make my own home after all. _

I had eventually made it into a good place, what I could have counted as good anyway. It became comfortable enough for me to exist here, at least, not sure what I would have done to fix up the place because I wasn’t the person who did it – my two guides – the betrayers – who still haven’t returned to me – the bastards. - those who built me up to throw me down once I let them into my heart.

Well, that domain is mine now, it’s all mine.

I would have equality, and I would have domination. Total ideological domination.

I cast my mind back to where I was first of all. My very first experience of the World of Ideas, before the terror started, and the pain.

Before I go any further, I should mention that ‘falling through’ as it’s called doesn’t actually hurt. You barely notice it, as you’re supposed to. I didn’t feel it either it was like a blink, then I was nowhere, and then I was here.

A cold-drenched snow-laden place with droplets of sleet running from the roof of the enclosed metallic, militarised complex. A distorted place that seemed not to belong to the outdoors or indoors. For some reason:  _ ‘Huh? Why is it snowing indoors’  _ wasn’t my first thought.

The unnaturally twisted landscape, scraps of buildings toppled on their side in the winter scape, sharps of metal stuck in the ground like monuments. The only thing that kind of seemed to be in good measure was some kind of red flag on a very large white pole. The flag had some sort of indistinguishable dark symbol on it that I couldn’t see. It pointed to a clouded sky with light blue ripples streaming through it.

My first thought was something closer to:  _ ‘How did this even fucking happen’.  _

I had dragged myself off the ground in a daze. My surroundings had felt unreal to the degree that I thought it would be nonsense to start questioning it. I was a lot more concerned about myself anyway, to use an old cliché, I had first assumed that I was dreaming or had perhaps fainted or was in a coma but swiftly came to realise that I was very much awake. Completely and utterly awake.

I had looked just as I did before I came down here. I was wearing the same clothes anyway. I had not been blessed with bright purple skin and mismatched eyes or another other powerful, eaglelike features. I was just the same as any other human, a mismatch of things and dressed in an equally messy way.

Ignoring the initial ridiculousness of my environment, I stumbled around trying to find any sign as to how I had actually got here. There were no clear tears, no flashing purple portal for me to somehow return home through. No planes, nothing. I had found myself in a lonely, lonely place. A place which, at the time, was even lonelier than me. Spiritually lonely – what you might expect from a world made of snow. Didn’t realise how literal that was back then, but I was stupid like all humans are.

My initial searching, wondering, wandering – it lead to nothing. With nobody around me, nobody to ask time began to drain away. It must have been days, yet I hadn’t felt hungry nor tired, but I was starting to feel a strange kind of pressure mounting on me. It almost seemed like my own anxiety was being embodied and felt physically on the rest of my body somehow. That’s how I had thought of it anyway – it turned out to be much much worse than that, I’m sure you understand!

_ Of course, you felt just as I did, Posadist. _

Those days, all I did was run around, bumping into various empty buildings, all metallic with nothing inside them. I would try and tear them apart, but I was obviously too weak to do anything. There was nothing inside of them to help me, and I was growing more and more terrified. I had found myself banging on walls just looking for someone anyone to hear me. I was jet to realise back then that I was truly trapped.

This ‘invisible’ energy surrounding me had gotten worse. It was as if it was strangling me, squeezing my neck and pulling the rest of me downward. I fought and fought against it but eventually, after however long, I collapsed.

_ Had I fallen asleep?  _

_ I hadn’t dreamt of anything or seen anything.  _

I had expected to never wake-up again after I had collapsed. I thought I had just died there and was greedily anticipating some kind of weird near-death experience before blacking out entirely. Like some angel would come down and tell me how worthless my life had been. 

It wasn’t that, but someone had come to greet me, and they were much worse than an angel.

A man in a pair of red boots, with a deep red coat and a deep read everything else, was standing above me. Underneath all of that, he had a veneer of intense strength: a deep-set face, dark hair and piercing eyes. I would have described him as a bit like a bear. He had the energy even if he had no clear animal-like traits. He was clearly inhuman, but I would have guessed that he was somewhere in his mid-twenties if he were human.

“Hey, get up,” He told me with no emotion in his voice.

He softly kicked me in the hope of that I would get up, but I think that I wanted to lie in the snow forever. I didn’t have much else to do, there was no life for me here. I had mentally given up, and no big strong, attractive red guy was going to say me.

Little did I know, it seemed that ‘saving me’ was the one intent that this man had, and by saving me, he meant ruining my life even more.

I groaned and resisted his kicking.

“No, please, get up!”

“Ugh.”

Seeing that my weak-ass wouldn’t even budge he ceased kicking me and instead, decided to kneel down and look at me face to face. I think he was trying to give me a gentle smile, but his face was so harsh that he didn’t look remotely warm.

“Look, human, I know you are tired. Nobody has been here in years, and nobody ever wants to come here, but I came, I saw you, I found you, I have a warm place to stay, and you need that?”

I lifted my head up and reached out my hand.

I had expected, and kind of wanted to just die there. Still, even then I hadn’t already died from lack of food or sleep, it was possible that I hadn’t been here as long as I had thought or that this world operated on a ‘three days is actually thirty seconds’ thing, and I had just been here for what had appeared like a long time.

The offer he had given me was tempting. Sure, it didn’t seem like I would die, but if I did have somewhere to rest, and maybe something to eat if I was lucky perhaps, I would have felt a bit less suicidal. Yet, I still didn’t trust him, nor his manly face.

“Y-you do?” my voice cracked as I offered my scepticism.

“Well, why would I be lying?”

I paused.

“What do you want to do with me?”

“Nothing, there is nothing to do with a human, like yourself. I simply want to give you some protection, no Ideology comes here, and I certainly don’t expect a human to be lurking around here either. It would be immoral for me to leave you here in such a dangerous place it would be for the good of all us after all.”

I tapped my fingers on the snow. It wasn’t cold anymore. I pressed it into my fingers, hoping it would eventually grow cold again. Believe it or not, I had no idea what an ‘Ideology’ was back then. I had just assumed it was a weird turn of phrase and ignored it. I should have at least asked what it was, I regret that now.

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll make you.”

Within a matter of seconds, the tall red man with the Russian accent lifted me off of the ground and flung me over this back. With the small amount of energy that I had left, I tried to kick and scream, but I was just shushed.

“You can call me Tankie, by the way, it’ll be like a cute pet name between friends, yes?”

_ What sort of a fucking name is ‘Tankie’.  _

-

I was brought into a wooden lodge-like place. There was a warming fire which heated the entire room and painted it an orangey-red colour. There was some kind of red and golden flag hanging on the wall which I didn’t recognise at the time. The rest of the room was otherwise very plain: A few tools for woodworking, an ice-pick, a sickle and some other stuff used for hard labour. There was a basket of bread, and a small fridge plugged into the wall, it seemed to be the limit of the technology around. There were two sets of wooden beds up against the wall one as a double bed and one as single. There was a pile of books lying randomly on the floor as well as some books stocked up on the mantlepiece - the fire from below, making them glow.

I could only wonder what kind of guests this guy had. I would have guessed not that many.

He let me down on the single bed on the left side of the room.

“Now get some rest. We can talk later.”

He couldn’t make me sleep, but now I could at least sense that he wasn’t going to kill me in his sleep.

Despite the lacklustre appearance of the room, it felt safe here. It could have been the fact that I had spent so long in an aimless place that any semblance of humanity had a therapeutic effect on me. I had forgotten what so-called basic hospitality was whilst I was trapped in there.

I think I overestimated his welcome. At that point, I had not realised that that the kind of generosity that humans are able to have was not held by Ideologies. Humans could commit random acts of kindness without intent, Ideologies had a reason for everything that they did.

When he asked me to speak with him, I groaned out of tiredness and nodded without thinking about it too much. I had no idea what he wanted to talk about with me about. For some reason, I didn’t guess that it had something to do with the bundles of books that he had kept around the lodge. I wasn’t able to read any of the titles of them from where I was lying, but they all looked hefty. Something suggested that they weren’t just for reading anyway.

I felt the mounting anxiety resting on me, starting to slowly fade away, and I shut my eyes. I was able to sleep, for the first time in God knows how long, I actually went to fucking sleep.

The worst part about it was the anxiety fading. Because my anxiety had faded, that is when the pain began. The war in my mind had started.


	3. Interlude 1: First Incision

“You wanna know something about becoming an Ideology, Posadist?”

Posadist had already leaned back so far that he hadn’t noticed the mirror behind him was broken. He wondered if Nazbol was going to tell him something that he already knew or deliver another one of those metaphorical ‘truth bombs’ on him.

“Yeah, what about it?” He asked casually.

“Hmmm.” Nazbol rocked back and forth in his seat. “I know you turned into an alien, not all of us do, so you might not have noticed the little things like I did,” Nazbol gave Posadist a wink.

Posadist felt the sharp mirror shards dig into his back, slicing against his weak insect wings. “Little things? What’s that phrasing supposed to mean?”

Nazbol’s story, even though it had just started was making Posadist uncomfortable, it was resonating with him, but the mention of the betrayal he went through had got him thinking. When Posadist remembered what he was told: ‘ _ This is a sad, unfortunate happenstance, but I’ll stay with you, I will’.  _ He wasn’t betrayed, but he was cared for, at one point.

Posadist hadn’t seen the person who helped him that time,  _ Trotskyist was it?  _ A sudden chill ran down his spine - Trotskyist might be dead now.

“You know, the little things, how your personality changes, how your fuse grows shorter and shorter, how the world goes fuzzy, how the war in your mind starts and you cannot even fucking run from it?”

“Plain English for my stupid alien head again Nazbol, can you repeat that?” said Posadist. 

“Becoming an ideology is kind of painful, you see? It is when the World of Ideas hates you anyway because it’s kinda like a war inside your brain.”

“I’m not sure if it was a war inside my brain, Nazbol Nazbol!”

“I wasn’t fighting against my uh, indoctrination in the outside world, but inside the doubts inside my head they were kind of physical on their own – you are literally going from one being to another, physical or not! If you don’t want it to be happening, it’s going to be noticeable.”

Posadist nodded. “But you describe it as a war?”

Nazbol shrugged and bobbed his head. “I’m an ideology, of course, I would use that kind of metaphor?”

“So it’s just a metaphor?” The alien blinked. “You interrupted your story to give me a metaphor?”

“Thing with that metaphors is” – Nazbol jumped off the bed with one great leap, bypassing the stairs completely – “Countries on Earth tend to uh, change to a new system of governance after they go to war, yes?”

Posadist laughed and shoved his already damaged wings into the pointed edges where the mirror was still stuck in its frame. The little jabs at it, starting to now comfort him.

“Soooo would you think the indoctrination of an induvial by a mix of the bizarre laws of the universe and by two people that he once thought were his dearest and only friends could be kind of like kind of a war of sorts? The change of mentality being unwilling and only after a long struggle. Especially for ideologies there is an almost concrete truth in that comparison,” Nazbol said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Becoming more and more comfortable falling backwards into the damaged frame almost as if he was slotting himself into the ruined mirror, Posadist blinked at Nazbol. He knew the guy was a freak he didn’t know he had some weird complex about losing his identity to one of those Communist types. He was losing a sense of what to say, and it didn’t seem to be reliving his sense of misalignment with his body structure – all this thinking – less time to rip off what he hated to perhaps return him to a sense of reality again. 

“Well, heh, not the way I see warfare, that’s for sure! One fell swoop is all you need,” Posadist scoffed.

Nazbol took a step forward toward the strangely positioned Posadist, his bird eyes glimmering as if he had spotted a shiny trinket. “Just because you don’t remember or care what warfare feels like doesn’t mean you can’t see it as important, no?”

“Tsk. Now I can believe you spent time with those absolute fools in the blue uniforms.”

“Maybe I did, but would any of them believe that war could be a personal thing too? They have such grandiose projections of the concept they would never listen to a silly, silly Lil’ Nazbol who said he had a fight going on inside his head. They seem to think the World of Ideas is, in a sense, precious too. I mean, when you are a Nationalist without even an Earthly country to call your own what else do you have?”

“Hey, I thought the ‘Naz’ in Nazbol meant National. Is this a mockery to your own nonsense ideas too?”

No matter how much Posadist would insult Nazbol, he wouldn’t leave the premises or give up on his conversation – Posadist was unsure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Oh I do cherish the World of Ideas, I cherish it for its horror, and you know, I think you should too.”

Some of Posadist’s old, lonely memories flashed through his mind. He flashed his pointed teeth in response.

“What’s that supposed to mean, oh, Lil’ Nazbol.”

The purple Ideology grinned back. “It means that I think I know what you are trying to do and since you are listening to me, I’d like to return that favour.”

Even with his usually calm demeanour, Posadist started to feel himself sweat nervously. Of course, Nazbol had to come into his home at this very time and had obviously noticed what all those knives and cleavers were really there for. Posadist started to wonder if he had reclined into the mirror to hide his things or if he had subconsciously wanted to break it. Break it right in front of Nazbol out of a cry for help.

“Return the favour, what kind of favour are you doing for me Nazbol? Here, sitting through your boring stories.”

“It’s not a  _ me _ favour exactly” – Nazbol completely bypassed the weaponry that Posadist kept on the desk and grabbed a large shard of the mirror that had fallen onto it – “It’s a favour from me to you.”

Nazbol held up the shard of glass and pointed toward the ceiling. The metallic room made the blade glimmer and gave it a silvery colour. Staring at each other, the two strange Ideologies shared a psychotic smile.

“This is what you were looking to get rid of, weren’t you?” Nazbol seemed to jump and pointed the large mirror shard at Posadist’s left upper forewing.

The makeshift knife slid through the costa and subcosta veins* of Posadist’s upper wing, but it hurt only for but a second. There were small amounts of bright orange blood falling down onto the desk, the remaining mirror and onto the floor like a neon rainstorm. Posadist shut his eyes but then, was starting to no longer feel the pressure that his wings had placed on him for all those years. He began to feel… a little freer.

“I’ll complete this wing thing while I complete my story if that is alright with you?”

Nazbol had dropped his smirked, whereas Posadist continued to smile, but gently. “Keep going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The top sections of an insect's wing, the costa being 'the leading edge of the wing' and the subcosta being the second one, behind it.


	4. Freezing

Nazbol

_ Now, where was I? _

_ Oh yeah, the Tankie, I had just met the Tankie. _

I didn’t know how long I had slept, it was likely irrelevant.

‘Tankie’ woke me up by poking me over and over again. He could have done worse, I suppose. The repetitive jabs only made the pressing headache that I woke up with worse, though. I groaned as I got up and started to remember where I was but still nothing about how or why I ended up here.

I think that I must have had dreams as I slept. I don’t remember the contents of it, not now and not at that time either. I just know that I did have a dream of some kind.

Dreams inside of the World of Ideas are something else, I’m sure you know this. I had not spent long enough inside of it to be able to work out the imagery of the dream, but eventually you get used to picking out every single object, movement or creature that you see inside of it. Dissecting your psyche as if it was a simple piece of meat. Of course, when you are a supposedly unchanging symbol, it becomes a lot easier.

When I can work all my brief dreams exactly, it makes me wonder what I must have really been like back on Earth - people I used to know, the places I used to visit. Perhaps some of my dreams that I have had since then had left me clues, but I have been yet to piece it together for real. Part of me hopes that I won’t and never will.

I shook my head and tried no to focus on the near numbing pain inside of my skull.

“Ah, you are awake, uh, what do I call you.”

My old name had been lost since I had ‘fallen through’ into the World of Ideas. Tankie looked at me and was anticipating a response.

_ Was I supposed to have a new name, was I supposed to remember my old one or rename myself?  _

I smiled at him through my recently realised migraine and said, “I guess you can call me Comrade!”

He seemed to like that reply. Yet, I think that was a small part of me sealing my fate.

Unless I had said that silly phrase unwillingly, I think I might have done.

“Hello there, Comrade. I am ever so glad to have you here.”

“You’re glad to have me?”

Ideologies have a funny reaction to humans. I haven’t met another human after becoming one of them, so I could go off what I remember both the Commie and the Nazi telling me and then what some of the, uh, less terrifying Ideologies had told me.

_ Do you know anything about this Posadist? _

Apparently, Ideologies have the urge to protect humans and their weird, vague symbolic value. The protection doesn’t appear to be in benefit of the humans at least but rather to benefit themselves. Humans support the existence of Ideologies, right? If an Ideology has too few people who truly believe in them, they start to fade away. Ideologies and anything that exists in the World of Ideas as ‘living’ requires humans to care for them in order for them to still remain here.

Although the World of Ideas isn’t completely alone, the relationship between it and Earth is interchangeable. Although the exact equation is disputed (I’ve heard the Statists saying that humans affect us more and the Anarchists saying that we affect them more, perhaps I’m an Anarcho-Nazbol since I’m not sure who to believe). I think the observation goes that the more of an Ideology exists in this place, the more it exists in the real world.

Support on Earth means support in the World of Ideas, and visa versa.

What I mean by that long and likely unnecessary ramble is, Ideologies need to assimilate people. It’s kinda like a driving force that was given to us once we lost our bodies.

_ I’ve noticed Posadist that you must spend all your time pent up down here when you aren’t doing all this wacky nonsense. It’s how I found you. Are you disconnected from that need to bring humans into your areas of thought? Or are you simply hiding it? _

A human that falls through into the World of Ideas straight from Earth wanders straight into a place surrounded by people who wish to possess them. Not to mention the World of Ideas will already start to make decisions in who you are for you as soon as you enter.

The person who had called himself ‘Tankie’ in a friendly way was more akin to predator, or perhaps a kind of vampire.

Yeah, vampire, that’s a fun comparison. Let’s go with that.

He didn’t care if I was ‘okay’ he only cared if I was essentially breathing so some other Commie could eventually be created.

Well, he fucked up, he fucked up greatly, and a lot of it wasn’t even his fault! If I were a more sympathetic Nazbol, I would feel bad for him for losing one of the greatest opportunities his single-minded and single-focused life.

Anyhow, when I asked if I was meaningful to him, Tankie just nodded.

“You know, whoever you must be, I could do with some help around the uh, house.”

I imagine that Tankie said ‘house’ to make me feel more comfortable, but honestly, his weird phrasing just made him more awkward.

“You want me to help you?”

“Could always do with more help from a  _ comrade  _ I did come and save you from the bleak mid-point of the centre authoritarians you know.”

“Bleak mid what?”

The Communist burst out laughing. “Ah, sorry, sorry. I can explain it later, Comrade, but I like your gusto!”

Tankie got up, away from the bed, his heavy boots pounding on the floorboard, and began poking around all of the ‘tools’ or bladed weapons. He touched each of their handles which appeared to bound in red thread.

_ Was there anything this guy owned that wasn’t Red? _

_ Yeah, must have been. _

He tutted, and then softly hummed some kind of anthem to himself. He must have known the tools inside out but tapped and poked at them as if he had never seen them before. I suppose if you live in a tiny shack of a house your whole near-infinite life, then you need to take a little pride in something petty. In Tankie’s case, it was his tools, all tied with ribbons and also immaculately clean.

As he finished humming his weird anthem-like rhythm, he pulled out a rounded sickle. He lifted it up in the air as if he was inspecting it one last time. He walked back with the same lack of grace he had the last time.

“Well there Comrade, friend, I think it’s best that we did our share of the work, is it not? Please, take my sickle, we will be making food come the third snowfall, and we need to conduct harvest.”

With my head abuzz with pain, I took the sickle without saying a word.

Perhaps it was the discomfort, maybe it was the chains of the World of Ideas pulling me forward, but for some reason, I felt no need to scream or tell him I didn’t want to do it. I already knew that I shouldn’t have to work for Tankie, rightfully so. I was never the compliant type, and I’m still not the compliant type now.

But I get the sense that the World of Ideas was trying to make me, eh, into a real Communist at that time – as one might say.

I took the sickle without any argument and stood up despite seemingly feeling sick. Tankie grinned as I lifted myself from the bed. I think he was proud of me or something.

“Now let’s go, the wheat field will not tend to itself, and with extra hands, our task will go so much faster.”

As I walked across the crooked little lodge, I noticed that I felt a lot lighter than I had before. At the time I had assumed it was just the massive headache I had, but it was more than just that ill ‘lightness’ my body felt kind of floaty almost, and my vision was more blurry than I remembered it. I held the sickle tightly, as not to drop it and slice my feet in two.

“Wait are you waiting for dear Comrade, uncomfortable with the mission briefing?” Tankie looked at me with a sorry face.

I shook my head but didn’t speak.

“No? Then what is that matter? Are you still cold from before, still cold now?” Tankie walked over to me as if he was examining me and then started walking the other way.

He started to dig through all of his books, pushing them to the side of the room. He muttered something to himself, he sounded happy. Underneath the piles and piles of books, Tankie pulled a jacket. A large, red, refined-looking jacket that nonetheless could be worn during outdoor work. It appeared almost the same as Tankie’s own with a little ring of animal fur at the top.

_ There are very few animals here.  _

_ Was that real animal fur? Probably not? _

_ Unless Tankie really did skin alive those talking animals that occasionally roamed the world, I wouldn’t have put it past him. _

Tankie took the jacket and tucked it under his arm. I waited for him in-between the door and the small single bed I had been sleeping on. Sickle awkwardly placed in my left hand – I still had no idea how to hold this thing. Tankie at least noticed this and took the sickle out of my hand when he gave me the coat.

Even in my hands, I could tell that this jacket was most likely far too big for me.

_ Maybe this one could have fit the Nazbol standing before you now if I had cut holes in the sleeves for these shitty talons.  _

_ Of course. That’s exactly what I did.  _

_ What if told you, Posadist, that the coat that the Tankie had given me, is still the same as this one now? _

_ Its colour has changed yet again, right? It was red when the Communist had it grey when I first wore it, and now it’s purple!  _

_ Perhaps if I made you wear it, Posadist, it’ll change and become orange? Or not, you’re no human I plan on manipulating, you’d probably just burn it anyway… _

_ I guess I can’t take it off now, good thing it’s hella stylish.  _

Back then, I saw Tankie as inhumanly large, I mean he was a giant, like an actual living giant, or the symbolic equivalent to one at least. Nevertheless, the look on his face, glaring but concerned, holding the sickle-like the weapon that it was, he was demanding that I wear it, for my own good.

I put the coat on with his watching and to my surprise, as I slipped it on my shoulders it changed colour, from a deep red to a more neutral, inoffensive, grey colour and also seemed to shrink down in order to fit me perfectly. It was soft and comfortable on top of that. It had looked raggedy when I was holding it before, scratchy, it wasn’t like that in the slightest now I was wearing it.

“Not cold anymore?” Tankie passed me back the sickle.

I have had every chance to rebel by now, heck, I even had what was arguably a weapon in my hand. I could have run out the door while Tankie wasn’t looking, but I hadn’t done either of those things even though more good consciousness told me that I was in danger, that I should have done.

Quite the opposite, I think, I was ready for work.

A cold wind entered the room as Tankie opened the door to me. The breeze was heavy enough for Tankie to duck his head as it blew through the room. Light and beautiful snowflakes dusted the entranceway of the lodge. As it slowed, Tankie peaked up from his hat, watching me. I watched as what seemed like a great flood of snow lulled.

“It appears, a little colder than normal in this sector? Eh?”

“A little… colder than normal?”

“Oh? I guess you can’t be used to temperatures like this yet, you will eventually, do not worry. The coat shall help in the meantime, it suits you by the way.”

I looked down at the coat.  _ Suit me well? I suppose that it did. It fit me a little too well. A little sinister isn’t it? _

“I guess it does?”

Tankie nodded. “Come on now, we must get to work, follow me.”

Whichever ‘Communist’ area I had been picked up and placed in was even colder than where I had originally ‘landed’ in the World of Ideas. The level of snow appeared about the same but the general wind chill and amount of wind in general. The snowflakes blustered from the clouds and flew directly into your face. The other place, everything there at least seemed still. Still, buildings made of metal, snow as an immaculate virgin blanket – a place which coexisted as a blank slate and abandoned historical artefact at once. The only movement ever came from the small flag at the centre, and the scampered running of my mortal body.

This place also seemed, populated. There were fir trees and some other different kinds of trees plotted around the landscape, not just that but the area was covered with other little lodges and lodge-like buildings, some of them deep brown like the wood they were made from, others appeared grey, but not a metallic kind of grey. Was it concrete? A different type of wood? Just painted? I couldn’t tell.

Aside from the different colouring of the buildings, the still mostly harsh environment offered little else in the way of variation. It was simplistic, with most seeming to keep to an identical lifestyle as everyone else around them. There was nobody fighting or wanting to claim or take more than another, just little plots of land snuggly coping in the perpetual winter.

_ Do you own your lil’ spaceship Posadist? _

_ The Commies don’t own any of their little ‘lodgings’ they aren’t sad about it, and I think that’s how it should be. _

_ The Commies have their own state and government, apparently, though I never saw them or any of their buildings in person. They must have acted like ghosts, forces of power, near unlimited and gifted to them, walking amongst everyone else there. Creepy isn’t it?  _

_ How does the lone Posadist act out his beliefs if there is nobody around to agree and collaborate with him, hmmm? _

_ How does the Lil’ Nazbol do it?  _

_ With selfishness of course. _

“Our collective farm is just past here, not long now.”

Tankie pushed past one of the communism trees to reveal a massive wheat field? In the middle of the snow?

The golden wheat seemed to have grown through the snow. It appeared, undisturbed as if unaffected by the cold, healthy even. Growing tall and meeting the pine trees at the lowest point where their leaves grew. They looked just as well in these fields of snow as they would have done in a natural farming landscape, even plants here at the innate ability to disregard the climate apparently.

“They do seem ready for harvest, I was right.” The Communist turned to me and away from the plants. “The rest of my… community should be here soon to take harvest then we will send this all back to the state so it can be processed and divided equally amongst each of us. Of course, I will have to fill in the right forms since I have another person with me now.”

He put his arm around me and pat my back before again, turning away and facing the field. Tankie was obviously lonely, even if he didn’t show it. I wondered if most of the ‘communists’ here lived alone and he was one of the few that had finally found someone else he could share if with, a friend who was willing or not.

That was the hope anyway, the reality is that he wanted to steal my life force away and make me another drone in his state and the World of Ideas’s system.

_ Now I’m my own government drone, as you can tell.  _

He hadn’t meant any love to me, neither of them had done.

“We better get to work, the both of us, the more we do, the more shall gain respect, yes?”

The possibility of how long I was going to be doing manual labour was starting to dawn on me. I don’t think I had ever done hard manual labour at any time up to that point in my life (relying on my human memories here, it didn’t feel remotely familiar to me until I had encountered Tankie). Since I had stepped into the outside, it hadn’t been just my head hurting, now my eyes, my ears and the rest of my face. It was more than simple tiredness, it was an ache that hadn’t come from anywhere and had only been getting worse and worse.

When I shut my eyes, some bright red light flashed through my head, it made me pause from the pain. When I opened my eyes again, I still felt a mild sense of shock as to my surroundings this strange place which was trapped in an endless winter but where nevertheless crops grew and even thrived. It also hadn’t quite dawned on me that a. I was not dead and b. that I was stuck and would most likely never see my family and friends again, or remember them, as everything grew distant from me.

_ As it turns out, yes, yes, I did forget them.  _

_ Some of the friendliness and warmth they provided me are… still there. _

_ There’s still something there me for me to gaze back into when there is nothing left for me. _

_ But who they were, of course, I forgot. _

_ Do you remember any of your old friends, Posadist?  _

_ Do you feel asleep secretly frightened of what they would think of you if they saw you like this? _

_ Or are you realistic enough to know that will never happen again? _

_ That the most you will ever appear to them is but a ghost if you’re lucky enough. _

_ Hm, is that a tear in your eye I see, Posadist? _

I was in the process of losing everything that had ever mattered to me, but all I could focus on was this stupid magical Communist, and this farm work implement.

_ Sickle, shiny and ruthless as the blade that cuts your wings. _

Just like the Tankie who was kneeling down to start his harvest, I was compelled to follow.

I must have spent hours (not days, again, World of Ideas held time in the same ‘symbolic’ nonsense the rest of it did). The sun was beaming down, a great cold orb in a sky built from white light, deceiving me with its false promise of warmth. The wind chill still hit me from beneath my coat, I thought I would have literally frozen at some points. Just me, my stupid human flesh encased in an ice block. If that would have happened, maybe Tankie would have shoved me in his burning fire and waited for me to melt. After that, he probably would have handled me a second sickle or something.

The snowfall had completely covered me by the time we had finished. I was breathing heavily, I was somehow sweating despite the sub-zero environment. These were just normal human body reactions, but they still surprised me, considering that the rest of this world seemed to ignore that. Tankie probably wasn’t sweating, he had probably never felt the toil of labour in his life he wasn’t built to get tired in that way.

Throughout the entire thing, my headache had also just gotten worse, and the worse it got, the greater obsessive drive to cut the shitty wheat got too.

“Ah, Comrade, we have done our part for the day. It is time for us to head back.” He smiled as I looked up at him from the ground.

Sort of dumb-founded I reached out my hand, and he was able to lift me up off of the ground.

The world seemed to spin as I was drawn back to standing.

“Eh, I’ll let you keep the sickle, it suits you, just like the coat, like a smaller version of me, eh? Maybe you’ll be able to work with it tomorrow?” Tankie pat my head, the last of the snow fell from my hair. The crimson colour of the Communist being contrasting the ice blue skyline. His eyes were dark, a little animalistic, his iris a blood red that was a bit hard to differentiate from his pupil. His height and physical strength must have made it hard not to push down on my head and damage my bones.

_ Yes, Posadist, human bones can break in the World of Ideas. _

_ But it will never kill them. _

_ No matter the pain of the fight, or the pain of the injury, a human in the World of Ideas will never die. _

_ It can’t stop something once it’s started; it has to finish what has begun. _

_ The World of Ideas can’t make sense of a dead human body anyway, what can it do with something that has no meaning and no thoughts of what to build that meaning from? _

_ At least when Ideologies bodies’ cease to function, they can go back to the ‘elements’.  _

_ What do you do with a mindless lump of flesh? Nothing?  _

_ It just rots and tears apart external narrative, especially if there is nobody to mourn for it. _

We started walking back, the same route as we came. I could tell how used to this humdrum routine he was. His life was practical, samey, probably consistent and comfortable, just the way he liked it.

I remember wondering at that time if I would ever get to lead a comfortable life. Those few memories I did have of college weren’t positive. I knew that I hadn’t fit in there, most of my old so-called ‘friends’ all seemed a bit too wild for me. I never got their weird party-based and alcohol-fuelled escapades I knew of in my brief memory. It was kind of glum, yes, but there was a tiny amount of envy inside me for Tankie and the apparent endless bleakness of his existence. He didn’t and never had to worry about assignment deadlines or being forced to go to a party that he didn’t want to. I guess I was here with him now, and that might have become my life. I anticipated that in fact, it was half sorrowful and half reassuring. Especially if the weird sense of internal torment towards this stuff would stop at some point.

Either way that wasn’t to happen. The World of Ideas had bigger plans for me. Or maybe that weird Nazi did, it could have been either of those things.

_ Life is anything but peaceful if you’re clawing at every chance of praxis, recognition as the sole entity of your concept.  _

After I had left the collective farm, the urge to work subsided but the agony, I had felt in my entire face hadn’t disappeared. When I shut my eyes, the lights that lit up inside of them were brighter too. A voice in my head started screaming at me to stop.

But stop what?

All my body had wanted to do was work, and as far as I knew, that’s all my conscious mind wanted too. It was as if my subconscious was pounding at the back of my mind and begging for help and like a dumbass, I decided to ignore it.

I supposed that you could count that as another bad decision in the ridiculous life of the person that would become ‘Nazbol’.

-

For I think it must have been around a week, life was… the same as it was that day, the exact same. Of course, I assumed it was a week, I only just had enough energy to count the sunrises and sunsets, and even those weren’t consistent.

Tankie seemed to be warming to me, sort of. He had given me a hat a little bit like his. Much like the coat he had given me it was a pale grey colour. It kept more of the cold out whilst I was working in the fields.

One different thing I had noticed was what seemed like my immune system failing. I was still in pain, and now that numb-tingling migraine-like pain had spread to the rest of my body. It was as if my energy had been all drained completely dry. I mention my subconscious again, I’d say it was trying to shut down my body, and I had to fight against it. I wanted to work, and I wanted to work with Tankie so that it would give me a meaning, a reason to exist.

_ Working in that field all day, it wasn’t supposed to be my purpose, but I hadn’t realised that at the time. _

_ Deep at the back of my mind, I knew this. I knew that I didn’t want to be changed by anyone or anything. I knew that I was still a human being, a messy collection of threads that couldn’t be tied with no narrative or understanding of one. The back of my mind knew that I didn’t want to tie those threads together – so it fought – it hurt because there was a war in my mind. _

_ As you can tell, ‘I’ lost that war. _

_ There is no way to win, the psyche gives up eventually. _

_ No matter how much pain it forces itself to take on. _

I pushed on, despite the conflict going on inside of me, again, anticipating a kind of stillness, a sort of forever which I had expected when I had first landed here in that place with the empty metal containers. I pushed on until I collapsed.

It was like my’ immune system’ was going absolutely haywire. I didn’t want to accept what the World of Ideas had suggested for me. The numbing pain had become bad enough that I was unable to move from the bed.

Tankie had been shaking me and telling me stuff like. “It’ll all be alright.”

Or alliteratively. “Why can’t you get up, please, please get up!”

Tankie was my friend now. I had managed to come out of my shell whilst we were working together, and I had shared a few things with him. Heck, we had even shared some of the state bread together. He had given me more; my hunger hadn’t quite completely vanished yet though it was disappearing day by day.

We had discussed where I thought I had come from, some speculation as to why I had ended up here, as well as the basics like how we were both feeling. Tankie didn’t have many emotions as I had expected. His straight face held no secrets, still waters did not run deep after all.

_ Am I emotional person Posadist? I think that I am. _

_ In my old human life, I don’t recall that many emotionally intense moments.  _

_ I would have remembered them if I had, not even the most defining parts of my old life were flooded with emotion. _

_ You would have thought a hyper authoritarian would be good at suppressing emotion? _

_ I suppose I am in a way, I am able to laugh and only to laugh. _

_ But would something that exists in between a ruthless dictatorship and a bird of prey really be avoidant? _

_ No, they would be ruthless and bloodthirsty. _

It was kind of sudden to see Tankie expressing emotion like this, a little amusing. It probably would have been even more amusing if I was able to move the meat container of my body around. But moving my arms or legs around, even to touch Tankie’s face would have been too much effort on my part.

_Are you ready to hear it?_

Here’s when the other bastard came in.

Turns out some blue AuthRight fucker had been tracking me all this time. The tiny man stormed the door down and screamed into the room. “Hey, get away from that human, I saw them first!”

Tankie looked back with a face of fucking venom.


	5. Interlude 2: Mirror Box

He had only screamed once or twice during the amputation.

The last of his lower wing had been ripped from his back. Every single shard of cuticle had been removed – leaving two long thin lines of frayed skin, bleeding in their place. As soon as the largest section of the wing had been removed, all that had been left was various pointed shards that remained lodged inside of Posadist. Nazbol had to take out each of the leftover material by hand. It wasn’t smooth or quick. To keep himself from crying, Posadist had to remind himself of the emancipation that it would reward him at the end of it, and for the most part, it had worked.

Nazbol was poking very gently at the groove-like wounds. Slowly pressing on them to clean up the last of the blood from his injury. Posadist didn’t have any bandages or medical supplies. He wasn’t someone to be concerned about other’s health, or his own. Whenever he did damage himself enough to bleed, he just let himself bleed out until it stopped. He shrugged it off, told himself that he deserved it and then carried on with whatever else he wanted to do that day.

“I’m nearly done, yes?”

Nazbol pushed once last time before finally lifting up hand his fully off of Posadist’s back.

He moved away from the shattered mirror and gently tapped Posadist’s body forward to make sure he didn’t fall back and further hurt his now weak skin.

Without his wings, which had been his kind of physical support for his entire existence as an ideology, Posadist felt wobbly. Even on a chair, he felt as if he was going to fall. Despite his frequent discomfort of the apparatus that that grown from behind him, he hadn’t fully realised how his body structure must have changed to accommodate them. He might have developed some kind of flight muscles which weren’t responding to anything anymore if they were even still there.

No matter, Posadist knew that this would be something he would get past though. He was strong. He would learn to live without his wings. It was worth it for getting rid of a body part that often caused him such annoyance.

As Nazbol walked in front of him, Posadist could clearly see the high amount of bright orange blood on Nazbol’s hands and coat. Despite his skin and clothing being a colour almost the opposite to the alien’s blood, it’s brightness disguised it – it almost made him look like another Posadist from the wrist down. Shard of the glassy membrane was still covering the palm of his hand the blood like glue, the pointed fragments remained stuck there as if Nazbol had squashed a very large bug.

Being held in his fist and pointing downward, Nazbol carried with him the largest section of Posadist’s old wings which, unlike the shards covering his hands, still remained in an almost perfect formation. Even some of the veins, those right in the middle, seemed totally undamaged. The yellowish layer that covered them still remained.

It was odd, seeing your own mutilated body part shown to you, especially in a condition like this. You certainly wouldn’t expect your hand or your eyeball to be shown to you without an awful lot of protest on your part. However, staring at his wings like this made Posadist feel, peaceful. Posadist would have to cope with living with these things every day and would have to look at them, even if he didn’t want to. It was still a body part as mundane as his eyes or his hair to him, but this was something that he felt like shouldn’t have belonged there, well, most of the time anyway.

Nazbol placed the two wing shards on a small table beside them. Carelessly, not to mention, it pushed off some of Posadist’s cute little spaceship artefacts off of it and splashed some blood onto the surface.

“How is it, Posadist? How does it feel to be uh, wingless?”

Posadist was slow to answer. “It uh, feels weird…”

“A good kind of weird, right?”

“Definitely a good kind of weird! I feel free!” Posadist returned to his usual fanged smirked, but this time, genuine joy was radiating on his face. Nazbol clapped his hands readily.

“Wait one sec!” Nazbol ran toward the bed, once again ignoring the stairs and started to tear apart the sheets.

Posadist had only briefly remarked on Nazbol’s talon-like hands, but he hadn’t realised quite how much strength the guy had or the force that those claws held. Once Nazbol had torn off a reasonable chunk of the sheets, he jumped back down, backward, in an almost graceful motion.

Once he got to the ground, he started to tie the cotton strands together tighter and tighter.

“Lift your arms up, don’t fall.”

Posadist was still wearing his shirt, kind of.

Posadist had to make most of his shirts by hand, just cutting holes in regular shirts didn’t work and considering aliens who looked like he did were now such an extreme minority nobody would make them for him either. The shirts that Posadist made for himself at least would be sturdy, hard to break. Despite the back part of the shirt being now mostly destroyed in order to get all of the remaining wing fragments out of his body, the front part of his shirt was still intact. It was still uncomfortable like this, though, and it certainly didn’t help at all with his balance. Nazbol had noticed how much discomfort Posadist was indeed in. He had fashioned this kind of band-aid chest-wrap hybrid out of bedsheet to both clean up the last of the blood and to make Posadist less dizzy, more comfortable at last.

“Could you raise your arms for a second? And, like, not fall over?”

Posadist nodded, his happy smile still not having faded.

“You alright with that?” Nazbol asked.

“Yes, totally, this is much, much better.”

Nazbol hummed. “You know, I’m not quite done yet, are you interested, do you want to still hear my betrayal?”

If this was any other day or any day before this one, Posadist would have been amused by telling Nazbol to  _ ‘go home’ _ or that  _ ‘he was no true wacky’ _ and thus ‘ _ I’m not obliged to listen to you’ _ . He never expected to relate so much to the stupid Nazbol.

He had also felt just that lost and alone when he was becoming an Ideology. Sure, the initial routine he had entered was different since the entire thing was based around him enduring changes within his biology. But it was just as isolating – not knowing who your friends and enemies were and why you were doing certain things that you felt compelled to.

Posadist was starting to realise how violent the World of Ideas treated humans for simply ending up where they shouldn’t.

Sure, a dumbass Capitalist who happened to wander anywhere within the AuthLeft quadrant would probably be beaten up ruthless because of how much their very existence spurned its citizens into fury. The World of Ideas embraced all forms of morality, though, by default, it had to because that is what it was made for. Though it existed only for the most ‘pure’ expressions of those ideas, even the weird centrists embodied something, had their own symbols, purposes and ways of living. 

Humans immediately muddy that water and as such were controlled and pushed around. They couldn’t exist as themselves anymore, and they never could again.

Posadist’s memory must have been an anomaly. Nazbol only appeared to have an eye for random details in his life, particularly those from around the time of his falling. Posadist, he could remember almost everything. His old name, names of his friends, family members, heck even the name of the college he had just graduated from. To let him remember everything that he had and could have on top of distorting his body beyond recognition felt like an unusually cruel prank played on him.

“Who would I be if I were to ask you to stop explaining yourself?” Posadist still felt the need to hide his respect.

“Awww, you really do care!” Nazbol mocked.

“Why wouldn’t I care about someone who was… helping me return to my former self, I would say…”

“Your former self, huh? I think I can see him a little now, maybe it’s on a physical level, maybe an emotional one.” Nazbol shrugged. “I cannot tell which it is yet.”

“If you’re lucky then perhaps you’ll see both. We’ll see both.”

Posadist looked up at the antenna at the top of his head. They weren’t as large or as off-putting as ones that might have been seen on an actual insect, especially on Earth. They were nevertheless obvious head adornments, head adornments that served some kind of function too.

Because of the antenna, Posadist didn’t always sense the environment with his hands physically touching things. He would also be able to sense the temperature of a room and how something might feel, even if it was several feet away from him. It still felt, not right to him whenever it would happen. At times the weird compound sensory information would overwhelm Posadist, especially when he had to go down narrow corridors and have half of his antenna would push against the walls.

It wasn’t just the weird how the antenna operated, they also just felt unnatural - like a kind of pressure at the top of his head. It made it awkward to put his head on pillows or anything with a large ‘backing’ to it. On the odd times, Posadist did need to sleep; he always had to find weird positions to sleep – it’s why the strange little spaceship worked for him. He could curl up and enclose the wings and antenna around his body if he really had to.

Apart from his wings, his antenna was probably the body part Posadist hated the second most. The wings just stuck out so much and were always noticeable. The antenna just didn’t work with the other half of Posadist’s anatomy. Posadist was starting to think his entire form was actually contradictory. A hybrid that was thrown together.

Again, The World of Ideas had no biases, if it saw a symbolic purpose in making something a certain way, it would do that. Regardless of what would be inflicted on the participant.

If he were more superstitious, Posadist would think that the World of Ideas would take some kind of vengeful action against him, or both of them for destroying its meaningful symbolism but nothing had come for them, not yet.

Whether he would end up more clumsy or cursed or something, Posadist thought that he might as well take his chance. Nazbol seemed more than willing to continue ‘helping’ him, if ‘helping’ was indeed the right word.

That and he wanted to hear the last of Nazbol’s story – he really did, when he finished, Posadist would take his chance to finally tell someone what also happened to him. He could view it as a final act in tearing apart his past.

Posadist gently reached up to point at one of his antennae and then grabbed hold of it, feeling the little segments run between his fingers.

“You know, if you really want to see what I’m actually supposed to look like… you could help me get rid of these things. I’d very much like them gone too.”

“You want me to stay and start with the antenna, eh?”

Nazbol leaned forward and reached out to touch them, Posadist jolted backwards. Those things could pick up anything, whether Posadist wanted them to or not. Nazbol seemed a little offended by his sudden jerk back.

“Don’t touch them! Just get rid of them and keep talking!”

Nazbol looked behind Posadist again, it was obvious that he couldn’t use any more leftover shards of mirror, he would have to use one of Posadist’s many other implements.

Nazbol reached behind of him and pulled out a fairly old cleaver, one which was unclean and slightly rusted. One Posadist had owned for years – there was still clearly some blood, more fresh blood resting on it.

“No, no, this won’t do,” Nazbol said.

Holding the blade in his hand as if he was a natural, he scraped the edge of it and tore away entire strips of metal, until the cleaver was shiny and sharp again.

“There, this will do it!” Nazbol lifted the weapon good-as-new in the air. “I suppose it’s also time for more to continue now?”


	6. Frozen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where most of the tiny bit of authunity is.  
> When I say tiny, it's tiny.

Nazbol 

“That’s it! It was I, me, who followed you all this way.” The scrawny blue guy pointed his gun at Tankie’s head. “Get away from the human or I’ll shoot!”

Tankie moved away from me in order to stand eye to eye with the stranger who had just burst through the door. He stood confidently against the barrel of the gun, the blue guy was shaking so hard. I was likely more nervous than he was, but he really did look pathetic in comparison to Tankie. He was way shorter, shorter than me, in fact - small blue eyes with pin-prick pupils that were watching the giant of a communist’s every move. I could tell from his neat blue uniform that he wanted other people to think highly of him, but he clearly had nothing in terms of intimidation. If it wasn’t for the blue tint of his skin then he could have been easily mistaken for a normal human, Tankie could have easily broken his body, that’s probably why he needed the gun.

“You’d really bring this human into our petty war? I thought we were done playing anyway? I haven’t seen you in a while, weren’t you bored of me?”

“No no no, I was plotting!”

I was, to say, a little surprised when I saw this specific Tankie and this specific Nazi collaborate with two other weirdos in this whole ‘Centricide’ charade. _Perhaps they really did want to be friends deep down? Or maybe the Nazi was just scared that Tankie would tear his neck from his shoulders if he wasn’t polite to him?_ I liked to think it was the former, it was far more amusing.

“You, _White Identarian,_ plotting? Ha. Don’t make me laugh.” Tankie jabbed him in the chest, and it almost made him drop his gun.

“I have, I have, I’ve been watching this human who fell right into no man’s land for far too long! Then you had to just take him from me and try and make him into your own Commie drone! Were you planning on setting him on me? Were you planning on ending me for good? Huh?”

Tankie just shook his head before ripping the gun from his hand and throwing it on the floor. “Calm down, I just did what any of us would do, you know, anyone…”

“But you stole my chance away! He would have converted to our side you would have seen it!”

Aside from some of my mannerisms, I had no clear signs of becoming any specific Ideology. From the outside, it appeared as if nothing had happened to me. The extent Tankie had influenced me wasn’t easy to tell. Well, Tankie hadn’t actually done very well in influencing me yet, but that wasn’t his fault it was mine, inadvertently.

_Becoming an Ideology is supposed to be graceful, not painful._

_Were we the unlucky ones?_

After having to speak to one of the Centrists about this (I hate them too, but God, I didn’t trust any of those Commie/Nazi look a likes to explain this shit either), they explained it like this: My body and mind had uh, a bad reaction to the transition. It was sort of like an allergic reaction – silly as that sounds. There are reports of even the most stubborn of humans gracefully accepted their new ideas as if it were an act of self-discovery. A little more rarely, there would be a kind of discomfort involved, self-doubt, a kind of fear racing through your mind or a small amount of physical pain: twitches and tingles. Even more, rarely was the discomfort the most pressing emotion and sorrow the greatest feeling accompanying the transformation – though this happens far more often within short changes, not ones that were as long and drawn out as my own. The weird Centrist then told me he had never heard of someone’s transformation into an ideology causing them to be bedbound. Even for the most powerful of Ideologies with some of the weirdest features. Apparently, the entire time I had been down here, I had been fighting against the ‘infection’ that the World of Ideas had placed on me. The World of Ideas resisted me as I resisted it – I really wasn’t _supposed to_ come here. I was an anomaly against the construction of the very world around me.

I was the worst kind of human, but I did get to become one of the most powerful Ideologies. I might have bitten back at the World of Ideas, just out of the courtesy of being, well, me but I think what I received, in the end, was a gift.

_Aren’t I imposing Posadist?_

_I am not myself, but I am someone better than myself, I think._

_Unlike you, I have no interest in removing these ‘identifiers’ from myself._

_So many acts I commit are perpetuated by the ideas that possess me._

_Yes, they make me feel alone, but in a way that somehow still feels right._

Lucky me, apparently I’m almost immune to deconstructing now as well. Since I went through so much nature-bending turmoil to just become the way I am, it’s as if I already went through my own deconstruction just to get here – meaning I’ll never become immaterial and can only die in a deadly conflict with other Ideologies.

_But let’s be honest, who wants to mess with me?_

The high amount of arguing had made it, so the bitch-ass Nazi hadn’t seen me not moving. Perhaps he had assumed I was sleeping or something. I would have rather had been sleeping, to be honest, the tension between the two made the originally mute atmosphere in Tankie’s home physically awkward.

“Tell me why he would have converted, Identarian, I don’t think you have a metaphorical leg to stand on right now.”

“But, I, I saw, I could tell that he… he would be…”

Tankie gave the blue stranger a disapproving glare as if he was trying to make him question his words.

“Let me see him, get out of the way you stupid fucking communist!”

The so-called Identarian tried to push past the absolute unit that was Tankie. He was just so weak and measly in comparison to him. By his body alone, he seemed in no way a threat, not even me, who was still mostly a mere human at the time. Neither of us were intimidated by his gun – which was now lying on the floor because Tankie had pushed it out of his hands.

“Get lost.”

“What if I refuse to get lost, huh? Then what would you do? What would you -”

“Is that even a question, Nazi?”

“What?” the blue man looked up at him with a dumbfounded face.

“I punch you.”

“Then do it, weakling socialist! I ain’t budging.”

Bad choice Nazi, bad choice.

Tankie didn’t take shit, Tankie just stared at his stupid face before shoving his entire fist into it. He made some squeaky sound of pain and muttered a curse word into the ether. He hit the floor in a slump, lying upwards, his eyes shutting. A large chunk of blood covered his face, thankfully it was red and not some weird blue colour. On top of everything, I didn’t think I could deal with colourful non-human blood as well.

The Communist had knocked the other Ideology out cold. It crossed my mind briefly that Tankie might have just killed a man in front of me but then I remembered that this was probably stupid thought. If the ‘Ideologies’ here could go without food or water or sleep for days, they could stand being hit around the head once. He, for sure, looked unconscious, though.

Standing by the door, I could see Tankie putting on his gloves and straightening up his ushanka. “I’ll try and work extra hard since you can’t come with me today comrade, they’ll be unhappy with us otherwise.” Tankie smiled. “Oh don’t look at me like that, you have nothing to worry about.”

He opened the door. The cold wind blustered through the room, it seemed to go grow colder day by day. It was at its coldest the day I had run away from this place, though that could have just been inside my head.

_Unless that so-called ‘Land of the Nazbols’ it had started obeying me before I had even realised._

_I urge you, one day, to go back to that place you know that wasteland I think you said you liked._

_Go back there and try and see if you can use your mood and see if you can control it._

_It’s easier than you think!_

_Especially since you are the only one._

_We are the only ones._

I don’t think Tankie had expected the other Ideology to wake up until a lot later. Tankie was strong, I had seen that. Even though he had been so nice to me up until that point, I was still kind of scared of what he would do to me if I disobeyed. He could have probably sent me into a coma for several days if he had wanted to.

Either way, Tankie had wrongly estimated the recovery time of the Ideology which looked much feebler than him. It’s not as if he wasn’t knocked out for a good while though, his body not being able to completely take Tankie’s strong punch. He did look kinda dead, ya know? Half-opened glassy eyes, enough blood for there to be brain damage. You could imagine the shock that I went through when I saw the guy shut his mouth and then instantly get up off the floor.

He shook his head, placed the cap back on his head and zipped back around to face me. He dusted the blood off his hair, which had dried quickly.

“Ha! Take it you stupid Tankie, I’m not leaving, you hear me!”

After yelling into nothing and at nobody he went to pick up the gun, he left on the ground. Thankfully, he placed it back into his belt instead of pointing it at me or anything.

“Hey there, human, I think we should get acquainted. Don’t you agree? Of course, you agree. Tell me your fucking name.”

I wasn’t going to tell him ‘Comrade’. I wasn’t that stupid, I wasn’t going to let him know that Tankie had some sway over me already – least he decided I was already wasted and just try and kill me there and then. So, I yet again had to come up with a second fake name.

“Uh, oh, my name is… uh, your National Citizen?”

“What?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, National Citizen, so glad to meet you! You’re going to mean… so much.”

_‘Meaning so much’ also a kind of code for ‘I wanna manipulate you into making another copy of me, but politely I guess’._

All of these Ideologies, so polite to little human me and then so rude when they truly realised who I was becoming, who I was meant to be, it was someone that neither of them liked.

_Do you even like me, Posadist?_

_I hope that was nod there._

“You know, I think we should be friends, as such, I’m gonna stick around for a bit, okay!”

He had no idea how creepy he sounded just then.

“Oh, hey, let me do something for you, even though I hate giving anything to someone who so clearly looks weak! I’ll do this for a dumb human that’s of use!”

The weird guy picked the gun back up again and was seemingly trying to pull it apart almost. Yeah, it really looked like he was trying to tear apart his own weapon in front of me. The one thing that he had that he could have used against Tankie… the guy who was his enemy…

I mean he did just walk straight into danger and take that fact in his stride. Making breaking his gun was another show of power? Maybe he wanted to punch Tankie back, deep down.

Even as various bolts and metal parts came out of the weapon, something else happened, the gun had split in two.

The guy in the blue uniform was holding two guns, exactly identical. “Here you go!”

Then he threw the second gun at me and pointed at it with his thin fingers. “That’s yours now, and you should be glad, and you should respect me for it, shouldn’t you?”

At this point, I wasn’t at the worst point I had ever been (that was the part when I ran away for real) but I was still in as much as I didn’t want to move. Although, I did manage to move, kinda. My fingers pulsing, I gently moved them over to the weapon to grab hold of it, I curled it around my fingers, my attempt to grasp it hurt me even more, despite that, I could still firmly grasp it in my hand while wincing.

“Now you’ve passively made a promise to me that you _must_ uphold I guess I better introduce my all-powerful self to you, I’m White Identarian, and I expect you to address me as such.”

I just nodded, doing so made it feel as if my stupid headache was moving around. I really should have stopped moving – especially when this crazy man clearly wanted me alive.

It was kind of funny, now, looking back, he had called himself ‘all-powerful’ like it was the only way for him to muster up a bit of power for himself. I might have just been lying down in complete and utter pain at the time, but I was going to be stronger than him, he who he saw as his prodigy. He was a weak ideology – maybe there were others that were similar to him yet stronger, but this one was weak, I could tell now because of his veneer of humanity that he was.

If humans could dye themselves pale blue, that’s who this ‘Identarian’ would be. He still called himself ‘white’ – how curious, eh?

_It’s almost like this whole deal with you becoming an alien, eh, Posadist?_

_Or maybe it’s the opposite._

_I don’t think the Identarian is someone you would want to relate to, Posadist._

The more powerful ideologies look nothing like humans. Nobody on Earth could have mistaken Tankie for a human – he was far too tall and far too strong. Humans would be scared of him just as they looked at him. Nobody would ever mistake me for human either, my eyes would be enough to terrify them.

_You’d be a nightmare, eh?_

_The bright light almost nuclear would make an average human sick._

_Are you proud of that?_

_You still want to destroy a good portion of them, right?_

_Ah, but it’s only because you care so much…_

Nobody knows what causes Ideologies to be born ‘strong’, but I think ‘connected’ is a better word. Connected Ideologies take on more animalistic features, they have more symbolic power and look less like people as a result. We’re less comprehendible almost. Even amongst those of us who fell through, those like us, there is no saying how or why we got that strong – The World of Ideas just wanted it, so I suppose, and that’s how we are now.

The Identarian had not had the same gifts as us.

_Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?_

“Now, I can explain –“

The door unlocked and then bashed against the wall.

Tankie stared at us both, eyes gleaming. “What’s this supposed to be, emotional bonding, eh? You woke up, and you’re still not gone.”

I didn’t respond to Tankie. The dude had given me a gun and had appeared incredibly cheery about it. Was that supposed to be an emotional bonding activity for a Nazi? I guess it could have been. I understood the Communist at this point but not the Identarian – he appeared erratic, he was frightening. It was made especially worse since I was just lying here in bed, unable to move.

Despite the fact, I was in this near-catatonic state, with most of my body numb and only my consciousness awake. Heck, more than awake, you could probably imagine the concern that I was going through at that time. You might think that I would have been afraid that I was going to be lying there forever – having these two Authoritarian Extremists trying to take care of me like a frustrated old married couple until one of them decided to kill me for being worthless. But, no, I wasn’t. Despite my lack of energy and well, ability to move anything but my head: I felt a drive in me, to move, to attain, maybe even to attack.

It was as if I was waiting for something to happen, just waiting for the ‘tide to change’ as it were. The time when I could finally realise everything that I was supposed to be. It was going to happen; eventually, I could sense it – the restlessness. It wouldn’t be long before I would finally move again, and the pain would leave me.

_It happened._

_It was the best – I was finally alone, every single tension in my body was free, and I was no longer fighting who I was becoming._

_When I say, it was the best, it was the best feeling, not exactly the best moment in my life, why would I glorify sacrificing myself choiceless to the narrative._

_What was the very best part of my life?_

_I have probably forgotten now._

_I might remember it one day, one of those moments that had made human life worth living._

_I bet it’s really boring._

“Oh, you and your left-wing emotions! I wouldn’t be having an emotional moment with anyone now, would I?”

“Yes, I get it, I can see that.” The snide passive-aggression was dripping from his voice.

“No emotion yet you’re still not leaving, huh?”

“Fuck no, I’m not leaving,”

Tankie narrowed his eyes. “So, you’re staying with me, during the night time, with no other place to go… so you can influence this human, so that you _might_ influence this human, even?”

Nazi tipped his head and bared a couple of his little fangs at the Communist, “So what if I do?”

“We, are worst fucking enemies” – Tankie slammed his steel-tipped boot onto the floor – “You wanted to shoot me? Now you come here and demand… lodgings?”

“Yes!”

Tankie’s face turned red-er as he threw his sickle down onto the ground.

“Hey, don’t damage your carpet.”

“I don’t have a carpet, you kulak idiot!”

Then Nazi stayed the night.

The whole night, in fact.

The whole what I assumed was the night.

_Damn, using time-based nouns to describe situations that may not even exist at those times because such a thing is inconsistent in this place gets confusing, huh?_

_Can’t help the human part of my brain describing that way, I guess._

Of course, Tankie couldn’t do any of his bedtime reading, either curled up on the double bed himself repeating the only thing that mattered to him, day in day out or to me just to make sure communist theory penetrated my human brain material.

_Oh, and it sure as fuck did._

Speaking of the double bed actually, because the Identarian thought that he was too much of a picture-perfect (paraphrasing) example of a human being to sleep on the floor, so the bed had to belong to him.

Tankie, being Tankie did not budge.

They shared the bed together.

Nazi had tried to put his gun in-between them in a kind of negativistic way. Tankie had picked it up and thrown it across the room. It had smashed and broken. I was now the only entity with a gun in the household.

I’m not sure if the two of them noticed how awkward and kinda gay they looked trying to sleep in the same bed together like that. At least, Nazi fell fast asleep, Tankie just stared at him most of the night half disgusted. They could have been a cute couple if I didn’t also know that they had tried to kill one another on multiple occasions and also that they were both lying psychopaths.

_I bet we’d make a cuter couple._

_Oh, don’t give me that look, I was just kidding Posadist._

There was for sure some kind of distinct change then, and it was a distinct change downhill.

I couldn’t use the gun – this lump of flesh contemplating the infinite power of the state.

_Becoming the infinite power of the state, actually._

Full of chronic pain, joints, brain aching, mind rushing.

I couldn’t even daydream very well to take my mind off things since my brain would always circulate around the same themes - violence. I knew I was I an icon. I knew there were deserving people and undeserving people, and I was absolutely the most deserving. Restless. Purposeless body. I had to find a way to act it out. The one thing I wanted. The one thing I had to do. Something. Somehow. But I couldn’t even move.

_My body had literally locked itself down to prevent the transformation from going any further._

_But I couldn’t fight forever – that last spark of whatever free creative influence I had left had to die._

_They had both played their part in killing it._

It was also now that I was starting to notice a few of the smaller physical changes the tips of my fingers, and the thumb on my left hand was turning purple. I had first assumed that it could have been some kind of disease from all the labour, but I wasn’t that dumb, I eventually connected the dots. I was becoming like them, but not _quite_ them.

They were freaking red and blue, not purple, at least if I was going to become a Communist (or if I had studied the smallest bit of politics) I would have known where I would have ended up. I couldn’t even identify my thought patterns enough to work out what it meant. I just knew that I was dreaming of an ideal: a personal ideal: and I needed to act it out, to bring it to me now. Whatever fucking colour I was turning it was related to that.

The other thing I had to put up within this state of relentless agony is these two funny rivals acting out a family sitcom drama with distinct insincerity. They had both insisted to me that they were still here because they cared about me. I mean, yeah, it did look like they both cared about me – they fed me and cleaned the bedsheets while I was still lying there and asked how I was doing now and again.

I was in such an awful state that I believed them, I had to believe them – there was no other way.

Of course, even though their so-called primary task was taking care (and also quote: attempting to indoctrinate) me I could still hear them arguing about mundane shit like tidying up but also more existential shit like the purpose of hierarchies under an authoritarian systems and if absolute mortality exists. You know, Ideology stuff?

Eventually Nazi got bored I think, or perhaps he wanted to stab me in the back for fun, who knows with this weirdo.

I was a good portion, uh, Nazbol by then. I could sense that parts of my body could freely move a little more, sometimes I could move my entire arm even! Granted – like half of that arm was purple – but I could move it!

I was still restless, though, very restless. The fact I couldn’t get up and just commit to my ideas once and for all was becoming a little less than a nightmare. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what had caused me to get some of my movement back if I hadn’t put an end to this longing to impose my will onto everyone through sheer power of fear and force.

Nazi appeared to me whilst Tankie was taking his few hours of sleeping time. Obviously, I was the one who slept the most, but Nazi appeared to be in need to far more sleep than Tankie, so it was rare to see him awake and Tankie sleeping. He must have been waiting for this chance for a while.

He could tell he was restless, he liked to think that he could read people both me and Tankie. The truth was he probably didn’t know how to read a damn book, let alone an actual person. He wasn’t smart, clearly. But he was crafty and maybe he had manipulated Tankie during those arguments involving the washing up, perhaps that’s why he never did the dishes? He must have been planning this for weeks.

“Say, you talk to Tankie far more than you talk to me, don’t you?”

“I think you understand why?”

I couldn’t tell if he was sarcastic or genuinely stupid. He shrugged at my question. “You know, I’m here to help you too, as much as I hate helping the weak. You, humans, are important, you know?”

_Funny how he called me weak, look at me, now I can destroy cities on my own._

“You’re here because you consider me important, to what exactly?”

I didn’t quite understand it at; first, I knew it wasn’t an attempt at kindness or anything like that, but the truth was – like all humans I was a resource, a precious resource, one that could be made ‘real’ I suppose. Although I was still seen as a way to bolster numbers.

_Not that I care for my individual identity anymore._

_I mean, look at me._

_It’s so sad to be the only collectivist of your kind, don’t you agree?_

_All the power that we deserve, though, right?_

“You know, worth the ungodly sacrifice of staying in this house with one of my worst enemies and of course, the dispense of my pity?”

“I get it, I get it, poor weak me, who is stuck here with no way out?”

“Whose to stay you are stuck?”

“Well, I’ll never get back, will I? So I’m stuck. Not even after whatever the fuck is happening to me stops. I can’t go back, shut up about the false promises that you’re pushing on me!”

Ah, yes, completely and utterly against my purpose – or purpose being newly defined I was still wrestling against, uh, becoming an ideologue because I wanted to try and think about home. Lying here, I obviously was just totally absorbed in my thoughts, and I did get the occasional moment to ‘myself’ to say. I could tear myself away from that circulation and just reflect on the life I used to have. I missed the stupid simplistic routines that I had, basic human comforts, friendly conversations with the people that were now gone from me, people that I had left.

_Ideologies rarely bury their dead, partly due to the rarity of death itself in the World of Ideas and partly due to being kind of incorporeal. You become energy, just leaving the body._

_Some do it out of human tradition, but most ignore the practice altogether._

_But it still haunts me sometimes, the people on Earth, they must have assumed that I died._

_There must have been some people to mourn me._

_People who still miss me on Earth to this day._

_Maybe one day they’ll become Nazbols too, and I’ll reach them through my one connection to the world I used to inhabit._

_We’ll share our belief system, and they’ll somehow work out I’m still alive._

_Ah, it’s the only thing I can hope for._

_I am friendless here and so are you Posadist._

_Or are we?_

_Do we have each other now?_

_I didn’t want to die for anybody, Posadist._

_I suppose I at least died for myself._

“Not that kind of stuck, I meant stuck in Tankie’s spare bed.”

“Oh, yes, that I am, for the most part.”

“Aren’t you bored, unfulfilled, feeling purposeless, useless?”

“Well, what do you expect? I thought you weren’t a man of _feelings_?”

“Regardless of how irrational your emotions are or not, I ask you, do you feel that way or not?”

“Do you really need me here to answer that question for you? Wouldn’t you get bored too if you were literally motionless? Staring at the ceiling or whatever the fuck?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was one of the deserving who got to come here by choice. Not my fault you pitiful creatures end up here by accident.”

“Came here by choice?”

“Let’s not dwell on that, but I can take a good guess as to why you feel restless, you want ‘praxis’ don’t you?”

“Excuse me what?”

“You won’t be complete until your ideas manifest, concrete, observable; otherwise you’ll be this lacklustre… thing, for the rest of eternity.”

I obviously couldn’t agree with him on the whole ‘eternity’ thing. I was changing little by little, but it was still change. Maybe I had been lying here longer than I was even aware of. The change would come, but perhaps it would have reached near eternity? Regardless if he said that to be an ass or not the hunch that I may as well could be here forever. My ideas made concrete… what even would that really look like?

“Thing?”

“Half and half, thing, yes, why does that kind of description offend you?”

“Why would it…”

The Identarian scoffed, he pulled the gun that was in his belt holster out before tapping the bed as if to prompt me to get the other gun too.

Yes, the gun was still there.

I hadn’t moved it, nor had it been moved.

I wasn’t going to waste the energy trying to move it again, moving a gun wasn’t some deep-held ‘praxis’ or whatever the fuck. It wasn’t worth it – I couldn’t hurt Tankie or Nazi and doing so would have just been an emotional and physical waste.

“I’m not picking it up, I don’t need that thing.”

“Are you sure? I made it for you, and now you’re saying that you don’t care about me?”

“Wait - am I supposed to?”

Nazi’s head tipped. “Oh go on, just tell me how you feel worthless, how worthless you’re really feeling, I want to know, nay, I need to know.”

I scoffed. “Needed? You need me to tell you, why do you need me to tell you if you clearly -”

“Ugh. I’m done insulting you. I’ll stop being my normal whiny self and just answer you straight, I know how to help you, I know how to, make you walk again, give you a purpose?”

“Really, and with full honesty?”

“Absolutely.”

Nazi picked up the gun that was next to me and threw it behind him. “Give me your hand.”

He held out his gloved hand, it looked all messy, pulled apart, old but at least washed. I could only wonder how much conflict he had seen or how old he even was. Realistically, he didn’t look that much older than me, he appeared maybe a couple of years older than me, three at most. But in terms of how long he’d living here, I had no idea, he could have existed here for longer than even Tankie.

Lost for anything to do, any kind of stand against what was going on, I did take his hand.

“Now try standing up.”

I wouldn’t have imagined being able to stand up – a few seconds ago – but I could now.

As I did hold the hand of this complete asshole, I did manage to stand for the first time in days, so many days. I felt the hard wooden board under my boots, ones which had also been given to me by Tankie. I was still wearing my hat and my coat as well. They hadn’t changed colour, not yet, they were both still grey. There was nothing printed on it either. The only thing that was ‘wrong’ with me was my hand which had turned purple.

I admit, standing up after a long time made me kind of dizzy, like the world was looking different now. I had forgotten that the fire was always burning, the logs never replaced, because they had never needed to be replaced. No matter how many books Tankie had read, they were always tidy and well-collected. Even if various things around the so-called house like the laundry laid around the place but the things that mattered, they were all in place, they were all in a place like they had to be.

Nazi let go of my hands. I was standing, I was standing unaided. I could move my legs and start slowly walking around the little lodge cabin. I was flustered, shocked as to how this had happened. I had asked for help getting up before, but this had been the only time that it had worked.

It was exciting. I forgot for a little that I was surrounded by weird ideology people with ulterior motives. I could move again! It was like a miracle (but it was more like dark magic or something).

The blue man nodded at me, he was clearly amused at my delight. “Oh, would you look at that, it worked.”

“It worked… it did work!”

“Of course, look, I have succeeded where Tankie had otherwise failed you, it is motivation, not love that pulls you forward, is it, National Bolshevik?” He kicked the ground with his boot, dust and ash scattered around the room.

I was too busy being distracted by the fact that I could walk again and feel things that were not those stupid bedsheets that I completely missed the weird name he had given me. But in the end, I remembered it – that little phrase – It had probably seeped into my brain because it was now important to my symbolic image. It had probably been the first time in my life I had heard that phrase too.

_It’s funny and sad how little I knew._

_I just wished that I knew what my thoughts meant._

_Tankie didn’t even tell me what was going to happen to me here._

The way the Nazi smirked when he said that. I think that he thought he could change me if he put forward enough of his own disgusting actions. He could end what he and the other Ideology had already started, through coercion, even if he could tell what had been started.

_Well, he managed to push me into doing one thing._

_One thing that was apparently enough for Tankie to finally reject me too._

Nazi kept kicking the floor until he eventually pushed the second gun in front of him and he picked it up. He flung it up in the air and then flung it at me a second later. Despite never being the most dexterous person, I was able to catch it instantly as it flew through the air.

“See, you’re so ready for this.”

“What do you mean ready?”

“Ready to truly be my ally. Now, follow me.”

I shoved the gun into my coat pocket and slowly started to follow the AuthRight freak outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upcoming: Two Nazbol chapters in a row!  
> Initially this was going to be one chapter but I eventually had to end up splitting it because a chapter over 10k doesn't really work for this fic.  
> It's also why this chapter took a bit of time to get published!


	7. Absolute Zero

Nazbol (Again)

Nazi marched in an army formation across the snow, hands behind his back, smug, Shoulders back, pacing himself always just one step ahead of me in what he saw in an ideal formation. I followed behind in a pace near equal to him, I still had no idea how my body was able to match his exact pattern of movement.

It appeared to be night-time. The moon above us was a frosty shimmering crescent, it was just as white as the sun. Smalls stars twinkled between the small collection of grey clouds where the snowflakes still fell. The snow here, the cold, it never ended and would never end. Each layer of the snow would eternally replace itself. Even as both of us trudged through the snow in our heavy boots, the footprints that we crafted were instantly replaced as soon as we left them behind.

The lodges and grey buildings, of which there was seemingly an even amount of, started to grow more and more distant. I wasn’t sure at what point I had reached with the blue man, but many of the little Communist homes were now in the distance, only their lights could be seen from here as well a tiny bit of smoke which was rising for their chimneys. There was almost a kind of forested area here, more of the fir trees, pine and spruce gathering. It was even darker here in the night time – shrouded. Nazi’s face had become non-distinct as he had slipped into the forest. I hid behind one of the first trees I had seen, from here, I could still see the white blanket of snow behind me. Nazi, however, had fallen back into the darkness. He was huddling, but there was nobody around? Perhaps it was just his nature? He smiled at me, one of the most genuine smiles that I had ever seen coming from him. His teeth were shining as if they were immaculate like he had had his teeth whitened. He had small fangs, like that of a snake or a cat that were at the very back of his mouth. They were clearly a lot more pointy than regular canines were, but there was nothing that was particularly frightening about them. Though he probably thought of himself as scary. I felt as if I should have been scared of him, but I wasn’t.

“It’s good out here, isn’t it, good, calming, we are away from here, yeah?”

I shivered but not even from the cold. “What are doing, why did you bring me here?”

“I’ll tell you, but let me first just say that I’m proud of you for getting all the way out here. See, just moments ago you were lying around doing nothing, worthless, but now you’re all the way out here. You walked all the way out here, empowering isn’t it?”

“Hmph, I was doing actual work in the fields just a short while ago. Of course, you never saw it, you only got to see me at my worst.”

“At your worst now? Well, now you can really show me what you are like at your best, you know, with a real member of the Authoritarian Right on your side. Look, I know what is happening to you.”

He stepped forward out of the shadows just enough to grab my hand, the one that had turned purple. “See, you’ve probably know enough about me and the, ugh, Communist by now that you’ve started to learn and well adapt to our ideas.”

“You call this adaptation?”

“What else could I say, I suppose?”

“You’re adapting to this world and becoming like this because of what you’ve seen, you’ve learnt a bit from me and a bit from Tankie, right?”

I pulled away from him. “Yes, but what’s it to you?”

He dropped my hand with a little bit of a disappointed expression. “Well, well, well, I think it won’t end up being as equal if you accept my aid?”

“Uhh, you got me to walk, you brought me out here and asked me if I was ready for something… Why the fuck did I even follow you here?”

_Truth was, I had felt compelled to._

_Where else did I have to go, anyway?_

_There was only me and only me here._

“Look it was only I who got you to standing again, of course, you wanted to follow me because you wanted to know why? I’ve already done much more for you than Tankie has done. Well, Tankie did nothing.”

“Actually, Tankie provided me with work and food, and you know, made sure I didn’t die. All you did was the washing up every so often!”

Nazi shook his head. “You don’t need any of that stuff. You’re an ideology, we don’t really need to eat or rest, only good praxis. That’s all.” He tapped the gun that I was holding.

“You still haven’t done shit, blue man, and you know that! Also, I’m not a fucking ideology.” I gulped and stepped backwards, my mouth turning dry. I nearly hit my head on the damn tree. I feared where the mocking Nazi would take me if I had knocked myself out on the shitty tree.

“Well, you’re going to be one, and I think that you are aware of that, aren’t you?”

I looked to the ground and muttered, “Yes.”

“But it’s hurting you, right? It’s why you could hardly move, is it not hurting less now? With the anticipation of praxis looming over you aren’t you feeling a lot freer already?”

_I don’t want to feel free, it would be antithetical for me to be free._

_I cannot work to confine others under the weight of the state, if I do not feel confined myself, can I?_

_Do you constantly feel like you’re dead Posadist?_

_Or at least sick from the radiation?_

“I’m not sure, I’m really not sure.”

The Identarian tilted his head, almost bending his neck aside like he was about to break it. His toothy smile looked a lot more inhuman now. “Anyway, here’s the plan.”

I nodded and said nothing.

“You see that ‘village’ down there? We’re going to take it for ourselves.”

“Village?”

I looked behind me, I had never seen any of the Communist area as a village. It seemed massive, vaguely infinite. Some kind of endlessly generating world where small homes would just phase in and out of existence as would the small farms that they created. Yet, somehow it the Communists themselves weren’t created that way. No, where they came from, it was far worse than that, many of them must have gone through the same thing as I was.

“Yes, you can see so many of them from here, scurrying around promoting their stupid state-enforced equality. Degenerates they are. Fucking hate them, all of them, every single one.”

“But they’re not bad people…”

“No, you just don’t get it yet. You’ll get it soon, I’ll make you understand. It’ll be easy to convince someone like you. Someone with such potential.”

“What the fuck?”

“As I said, we’re going to take the town, does that sort of glory not fill you with joy, anticipation, excitement, relief? Longing?”

Nazi took my gun away from me and tapped me with it. “Come on.”

I didn’t try and take the weapon back, I just kept staring at the Ideologies below me. There weren’t that many of them wandering around that I could see, but because of their bright red bodies, a lot of them stuck out like bloodstains on the snow. The rest were likely reading to themselves, I didn’t imagine they had many varied interested. They had simple and boring lives, but at least they were likely to be mostly peaceful aside from the odd scrap with these AuthRight figures. When I had first started watching them, I had thought nothing of it, just these humanoid figures ambling about in the snow. But I kept staring, and not only because I didn’t want to look at Nazi again but because I was becoming… entranced.

I started to sweat, even in this cold. I felt as if I could only look at these moving Communist figures. I began to see them as weak bodies, flesh that could be broken, then worse than that, enemies, my direct enemies, mere beasts in human skin. I was standing, yes, but even then my pain had not completely gone, but I saw these Communists moving around, I hated it, and I hated them. I hated all of them. I wanted to imagine them dead. I wanted to tear them apart. I felt my legs starting to shake, and the rest of me. _What was going on?_

_This is a frequent feeling, actually?_

_Have you felt it, Posadist? Do you go through this too?_

_Now I am at least the only member of my Ideology._

_I can slaughter indiscriminately, and I can feel alive again._

_I am the ultimate authoritarian, I must have others bow to me, even if I don’t want them too._

_Yes, that’s right, sometimes I don’t want them too, imagine that?_

_At the back of my mind, something wasn’t changed, and sometimes I still find wrong that I get treated like this._

_Like an Ideology._

_Then again, the mirror doesn’t lie, does it?_

I felt someone behind me tap me. The blue man and his ugly fucking face. He started to look more welcoming somehow. His neck was no longer broken, and his smile was no longer than of a wild cat. Without a word, I grabbed the gun back and held it in both hands tightly. I stared at him, arms shaking, breathing heavily.

“That seems like a yes, doesn’t it, my citizen? You can truly be one of my people?”

“It’s a yes, but not because you want it to be…”

“I’ll still take that.”

The Identarian pointed toward the village and aimed at one of the grey shaped houses in the distance. I squinted this one specifically seemed as if it was just thrown into the snow and now it was just sticking out as more and more snowfall piled on top of it. It could have been a block of flats at some point before someone threw it in a mountain of snow - half a tower, half a tower which was just lying there. One of its many windows must have been converted into doors, an underground set of homes which prioritised living just the same as everyone else.

Enforced equality, their code of ethics, but I wanted more than that, so much so it made me mad.

I wondered how they could live in such a way.

“There. It’s our first target. What a messy way to live, right? We could do more with this place, couldn’t we? Even if have to end up burning it for its own good.”

It was if I was so excited to just, extinguish life, I didn’t say anything, I nodded vigorously. The disgusting Nazi grinned his pointy, toothy fangs at me again. “Let’s fucking run, there’s no time to lose.”

I was grabbed. There was really no need to go into the forest except for the small amount of privacy we might have had. _Did the blue man suspect that someone was watching us?_

The snow pushed against my clothes as I ran feverishly. This was the one time that I could recall my clothing becoming cold and wet as the snow started to melt on them. The colours on them still hadn’t changed, they were still the bleak grey colour of when I had been first given them. However, now the ‘protection’ they provided from the bleak and gritty weather was weakened. I felt the snow reach my shirt and fall through onto my hair. The faster I tried to run, the worse that it got.

I didn’t want to slow down, though, I knew I had to keep going. I knew that the Identarian would get mad at me if I had just stopped because I had run out of breath. Luckily, my desire to follow this man and act out this state-based fury which had been boiling in my brain for far too long. Unluckily, the increase in aggressive appetite had also made the pain across my body increase from my head to my legs. It was hard to tell if all this movement had made things easier or harder.

Eventually, I kind of blocked out my surroundings. For a place that had once seemed so endless, I’m sure it was growing smaller and smaller. I couldn’t imagine spending my whole life here. All of the communists could have lived here as far as I know. _Did they find a way to make their small world feel better?_ I thought to myself what it would be like to amble around this little equality pen forever.

_This place is fucking paradox, isn’t it?_

_The World of Ideas is all in the mind._

_I might be crazy, I know you see me as crazy, Posadist._

_But I’m sure you noticed_

_I hope you’ve noticed._

_The spaces here are what you want them to be._

_Or rather, what you see as of use to you._

_I think maybe you only see what you want to see._

I pushed the idea that I was marginally upset by all these AuthLefts wrapped up in their lonesome homes so I could simply fill myself up with my missing rage. Everything was telling me that I had to crush all my positive emotional feelings. I wanted to destroy. I needed to destroy.

“Shhh, not so loud, citizen, we’re getting close…”

I stopped immediately, looked up at the blue man so I could wait for my instructions. I had grabbed hold of my gun. I knew I needed to be ready to point it at anyone, or anything. My hand and arms were shaking, I lied to myself that it was out of fear and not an abstract sense of glory.

“I’m gonna bust through the window, kick it down, we have no need to respect any of their property or anything that’s not ours for any matter.”

He kicked through one of the lowest windows, as weak and human as he looked he did have a powerful kick at that. He dived through it and seemed to vanish into the complex. I walked over and looked down. The entire building seemed to be on a slope. Lopsided. The flooring was on a slant. There were only a few lights around, mostly bare bulbs located at the top. Because of the dull light, it was impossible to tell if the floor was actually cement or some kind of plastic tiles: either way it was dull and grey.

“What are you waiting for? Come down here!”

_What was I to do?_

_My human body still couldn’t jump mindlessly into some grey pit with no end and know I would survive._

_The rage and the percussion were enough for me to jump through._

_Did you do anything daring to end up like this, Posadist?_

_Did you do anything daring to stop yourself from ending up like this?_

_If you did, it’s kind of funny that it did nothing, isn’t it?_

I say jumped, I fell through, actually. Landed on the other side of the sliding building and eventually into Nazi’s arms too. He looked at me, horrified as he held me with his right hand. He dropped me as soon as he could, hating the very idea that he had decided to help someone who wasn’t as strong as him.

I fell to the floor, and I hit the ground, it turned out that it was concrete. I probably could have broken my spine or several of my bones. I should have broken several of my bones.

This place was even darker than I had realised. The two little bulbs did very little to light the room. There was no heating and several of the windows had been broken, an extra one now due to Nazi’s messing. There was no roaring eternal fire to keep the place bearable, it was just as harsh as the outside.

The top-level of this old block of flats was clearly not used for living in, it was used as some kind of passageway as a way to enter the underground. I found it kind of strange that the entire area was left so makeshift, however. The communists didn’t exactly seem like the messy or lazy sort. All of their collective farms were so neatly arranged, rows and rows that lined up perfectly with not a hint of asymmetry.

It was weird that they would just abandon a place that they still likely frequented. Judging by how strong the Tankie that I knew was, it should have been fairly easy for a group of them to at least move this place enough so that it was upright. Then again, Tankie did leave his books around. It was as if some things had to be made perfect, but other things didn’t matter at all.

Nazi had already started running frantically around the empty container. He tapped something in the far corner, he had hit on metal, and it was now reverberating.

“Hey, look, Citizen, come over here. You better come over here!”

I was in surprisingly good shape for someone who had been dropped onto the concrete floor and was quickly able to make my way through the dark.

It was a little brighter here since there was a bulb slightly above us. I could see Nazi’s eyes, constricted, perhaps even a hint red. He was looking for the thrill of the kill for sure. As we stared at each other, we knew it was getting closer – the bloodied conflict.

I could also see the rest of me here, the purple had now not only covered the entirety of one of my hands but had started to extend down my arm, past my wrist. I lifted up the sleeve of my coat to see how much of my arm had changed colour. My arm wasn’t entirely purple, yet…

“This here, this is their elevator.”

I looked aside of me, there was a large set of metal doors with a line running down them, kind of a gap where they would open. I stared at it for a second or two, my brain scanning around for the buttons that operated the damn thing. I couldn’t seem to see any. They were likely just well hidden. If they really were in constant conflict with the other positions, then it made sense.

Then again, the Communists didn’t seem to care about security in other areas. Then I realised that this seemingly disused building must have been someplace secret.

After placing my hand on the wall and semi-mindlessly feeling around for something that might have felt like a button, I noticed something quite different. What appeared to be like a slot at the side of the elevator door. Yes, you needed a pass to get into this elevator and indeed to get any further - a pass in the shape of a plastic card, most likely.

Whilst I was pondering over a way to get through, a way to trick the card slotter thing if it was possible, the Identarian idiot was too busy trying to pull open the doors. Rip them open. So far, he hadn’t got them to move an inch. He was trying to pull it apart with all his might to no avail.

“Citizen, what the fuck are you doing? We need to get moving, and we need to get moving now. Stop wandering around!”

It was kind of sad, looking at him merciless to an elevator. He was desperate, so desperate to claw away at flesh! And well, I was too. I leapt at the chance to also try and open the elevator with just my arms.

On the contrary to Nazi, however, when I tried to do it, the elevator seemed to be cracking. Moving, I heard it scrape against the concrete floor little by little. Nazi started to laugh as if this was his triumph. He was apparently both weak in body and weak when it came to admitting his faults.

_What do you mean I don’t admit to my faults Posadist?_

_I do, I just don’t have any faults!_

_I’m just that perfect._

Soon enough, both of us (well, me, 98% of that was me) were able to open the elevator shaft exclusively by the strength of our upper arms.

I had gone from lying in bed, struggling to grab an object left beside me to opening metal doors just using my upper body strength. I had gotten stronger somehow. I hadn’t felt or noticed my strength change specifically. On the outside, I was still the same lanky me I always had been. _Or had I been?_ I hadn’t received any dashing muscles to match the increase in strength I had received. I had just done that, a seemingly impossible feat and I don’t even remember being that surprised.

The two of use peered down the elevator shaft. It was even darker than the concrete hell that was surrounding it. I had already taken one leap into the dark so I’m not sure how bad a second one would really be.

The air was musty here, full of dust and then the same particles of snowflakes. As I looked down the shaft, I heard dripping from somewhere. One part of me hoped it was water and another part of me hoped it was blood. I was still breathing heavily and the ever inclosing area as well as all the physical effort I had just gone through. This sure as hell wasn’t going to stop me, though.

Dangling from the top of the shaft were several ropes, obviously the ones that work to push and pull the elevator upwards and downwards. It could have been a long way down, and the ropes were the only obvious way to get down, safely that is, but it’s not like I was starting to care about my safety all that much. Whatever fucking safety was, it was keeping me from my true purpose: destruction.

The ropes didn’t exactly look sturdy anyway. They were thin and loose pieces of rope that looked like they must have been holding up the elevator for possibly years, if well, years even moved the same way here than on Earth before me.

_I still have no clue how things get old._

_I haven’t seen many old Ideologies, now that I think of it._

_If I was to take a guess, I’d say there are very few Ideologies who are younger than 18, and very few who are older than their mid-thirties._

_I’m still yet to understand why, though._

_I think I was somewhere between 19 and 20 when I first ended up here if my vague memories of my college years are correct._

_And well, despite having no clue how much time has really passed down here. Like how the Earth’s tides are connected to the moon, maybe the World of Ideas is tied to the metaphorical waves of politics._

_I don’t look a day older than when I first came here._

_I can only assume that it’s the same for everyone else too, and of course, for you as well Posadist._

_Everyone here is frozen in time, captured at whatever time that they cared about the state of our distant planet the most, whether that by force or by a genuine sense of compassion and in almost every single case, that amount of ‘care’ was far far too much._

_I only have to look to you now, Posadist. Look how much you care for them, the humans that you can’t see, the humans that can’t see you. You would be willing to set fire to their world so they could have what you see as an ideal way of life._

_But you didn’t decide that for yourself, did you?_

_You know, I wonder how much humans get a choice in what they believe, how they care. I wonder how many choices they get compared to us._

_I bet the comparison is startlingly similar._

_Or perhaps it’s just because I really desire it to be like that – that I see it that way._

_Are you frowning?_

_Or is your face just full of wonder?_

_I wish I knew that too._

The blue man was putting his hand on the ropes, tugging and pulling at them. I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish until he shook his head. “No, no these are far too weak, they won’t do at all.”

He turned to me and flashed his teeth again. The whiteness of them was still visible with the limited light. It made them a lot worse to look at.

I think that he was trying to convince me that he could be just as intimidating as Tankie by showing off the one inhuman trait he had. He wasn’t very good at it, being intimidating anyway. His teeth were uncanny, but I wasn’t sure if it was because they were genuinely eerie or because of the contrast between the cat fangs and the persona he was trying to present to me.

I wasn’t afraid of Nazi, not in the slightest, I was far more afraid of myself.

I was afraid of this feeling. This impulse, this readiness, that it would never go away. That for some reason, I would just feel like that forever.

_And of course, it didn’t._

_I get brief moments of respite._

_But you know the reason people fear me._

I looked at Nazi and then quickly looked back over to the giant pit in the ground. My brain worked out that clearly, the most obvious solution to this conundrum would be to jump into it. I’m pretty sure that Nazi was going to open his mouth again, but I didn’t let him.

I went ahead and jumped straight into the so-called pit.

As I was descending, the mustiness, the dust, all got worse. Enough to cling to my throat and give me the feeling I was being strangled. At least it was warmer, a welcome change after I had felt nothing but cold.

My fall came to a sudden halt as I found myself on top of the metal box of the elevator. I had landed perfectly on my feet. I had steadied myself perfectly, despite not having any idea when I would actually land. There wasn’t any pain in my lower back or my feet. My body didn’t even feel sore.

First the doors, then the fall. It couldn’t have just been working in the fields that had made me stronger. It had to be something else.

The undying need for praxis.

I’m not sure if it was a good feeling, but it must have been what immortality was like.

Now I had to figure out how I was going to reach the floor – any of the floors even. I stared ahead of me, and it just appeared to be more blackness. Before I could really get a solid idea of what I could do, I heard Nazi shouting back at me from the top of the lift. Despite the apparent amazing strength of my body, I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Before I could even scream back at him, he also decided jumping down the elevator was a good idea. I tried to shift out the way the best that I could on the small metal box. I left just enough room for Nazi to land in roughly a safe place. Then, he didn’t land in a safe place.

It was kind of funny actually, seeing him land completely on his face. It was nice seeing the narcissist so pathetic. He screeched the very moment he hit the ground. As he lifted his head, I could see that he bloodied his nose and that one of his eyes looked kind of swollen as well. He spluttered before wiping his face clean of the blood with his coat sleeve.

He then proceeded to slowly rise to sitting, slowly, very slowly.

“Gaah, fuck, my foot.”

“I’m sorry?” I looked at him and blinked, pretending I wasn’t amused by his suffering.

“I must have twisted –“he stretched before something cracked – “No, shit, worse than that, I’ve strained.”

I backed away from him while he was complaining about how weak he was. I had a fleeting thought of congratulating him for coming forward about his emotions in a sarcastic tone, the worst he could have done was yell at me, but I decided not to - unnecessary conversation. I didn’t say anything to him and just waited for him to reorientate his partly broken body.

I’m not sure if he had exactly ‘cured’ anything, his foot still looked twisted, and his back was still hunched over, but the way Nazi had physically twisted himself was kind of uncomfortable to watch. His legs cracked as he tried to pull them to be forward-facing, he moved his bones around as if they were the induvial ball joints of a doll. The Nazi might have been weak, both physically and mentally, but he did seem to have such a wild sense of control over his body. It was as if he didn’t have bones.

_You’re going to recover from your injuries quick, Posadist._

_You might be bleeding a lot now, but Ideologies have adaptable bodies._

_They aren’t so much ‘made’ to be adaptable, that’s just what is required of them._

_Our bodies feel very real, don’t they? They have flesh, muscle, bone, blood._

_They can get injured, if you cut one of us open you’d clearly see that they would operate like a human’s body._

_Oh, wait? You don’t have a human body anymore, do you? Not even remotely? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mention that._

_Regardless, humanoid or not, our bodies seem to be material, but really, they are just as metaphorical as everything else here._

_Really, we shouldn’t even have bodies, the World of Ideas was just nice enough to let us have them so we can comprehend ourselves._

_Yes, we can still die from an absolutely grave injury in combat, but the amount of control we have over our bodies is quite amazing._

_Yet you couldn’t pull those wings off with your hands? Seems like this place was really insistent in keeping you what you are._

_But, it is letting me stop that… isn’t it?_

I was looking over the side when Nazi finally stopped cracking every bone inside his body and screeching with his whiny high pitched voice. As it stood, there was no clear and obvious way to get actually onto the floor, but there was something risky I could do.

If I was strong enough to open those elevator doors on the other floor, then maybe I was strong enough to break down the elevator – crush it just enough that we could get down off it and enter the room with just enough space for both of our bodies to squeeze past.

I was crazy enough to try it, and it was crazy enough to work.

I stomped on the metal as hard as I could, and the sheer weight of my foot landed a dent.

I laughed and kept laughing as I continued to press my feet and fists into the metal, it curved and bent – creating a circular creator.

“Hey, Nazi!”

“What?” he had been lying in his back most of the time, partly unaware of what I had been doing.

“Move!”

It was too late. He had to roll out the way fast if he didn’t want to get hit by my foot. The dude had already hurt himself from the fall, surely he didn’t want this frighteningly strong unknown Ideology to stamp on him too.

Nazi had spent most of his time huddled over with his head in the brace position. He was cowering, the poor sucker. In some time, the heavy amount of stomping allowed us to see the second pair of doors. I had the confidence, and craving, now to open them myself. Nazi could stay huddling.

When I lifted the sleeve from around my hand, yet even more of my arm had been changing colour, but this time it wasn’t quite as purple as it was before. It was kind of an ultraviolet colour, not quite the same as the AuthRight’s own colours of deep blue, though. At least, that’s not how I could see it in the light.

After the doors started cracking open, the blue man slowly started to move out of his huddling position and sat up instead. I could tell he was glaring at me, he then offered me one simple comment. “Hurry the fuck up.”

These doors weren’t much heavier than the last set, clear proof that Nazi hadn’t been pulling his weight (but then again he didn’t have any) at least, the entrance past these doors was much brighter than the dark abyss of the elevator staff.

Without much of a second thought, I poured through the gap I had made for myself. Falling through the small gap, I landed on the carpeted floor this time. It was kind of a reddish-auburn colour and was one of the softest things that I had felt in months. Tankie’s shack hadn’t been carpeted, those bedsheets really were scratchy as heck. This was comfort. This shitty carpet, it was comfort. 

I got up off the floor and looked around me. It was certainly fancy for any ‘Commie’ place I had seen before. It was like some kind of a cross between a hotel room and luxury office space. The walls had this partly ornate, and partly tacky gold patterns. Lights hung on every single side of the walls - bright, glaring lights. Turns out, this was also the brightest place I had been in months. All the artificial lighting felt as if it was burning through my eyes.

I was able to stare at myself, see my brightly coloured hand, almost neon now, in a moment of lucidity, blamed myself for what was happening to me. Something was happening, something that would soon be over, something that I won’t know the end result of and yet something I felt that could have been stopped.

I was just about to lie there and wallow in self-pity when I heard a soft muttering coming from a room further down the hall.

I was frozen. I couldn’t do anything else. I was caught in the listening. I reached for my gun without even thinking. I couldn’t even make out the words in their voices, yet I was enraged by them.

I stopped thinking rationally. I could no longer interpret the patterns on the wall or anything else in my surroundings for that matter. My eyes were locked onto finding out where those sounds were coming from. So many mutterings, so many noises. I didn’t want to know what they were talking about. I just wanted to stop them from talking.

My field of vision had narrowed.

I could only see the white door at the end of the hall clearly. Everything else around me was just background noise. I had to block it out.

The reactions that my body was going through became a lot more noticeable. My legs trembling and the rest of my body sweating. The gun I was holding was an extension of my body, I was a weapon, and I was happy about that.

Despite my anticipation for the slaughter, I moved slowly. It was as if my limbs were sticking together – tired from moving me around so much. I didn’t want to focus on my body, I wanted to focus on my goal. Yet, this was the first time I had experienced the hunger of praxis.

_It always gets easier, doesn’t it Posadist?_

I had only flinched slightly when that AuthRight had come tumbling down from the gap in the wall that I had left for him. I didn’t see him, but judging only by the noise I had heard when he hit the ground he had likely landed on his back again.

After he had fallen, he immediately got up, rushed over and tried to talk to me.

I heard some of what he said, and I think they were supposed to be words of encouragement of some kind. First of all, asking me if I was ready to move on and second of all that I was admirable somehow.

He had touched me gently on the shoulder, just a little ‘pat’ of comfort, that was all he was willing to give before we were both going to commit mass murder.

As I approached the door, my breathing got heavier. My gun never shifted; it was always focused just ahead. Nazi walked next to me at a far faster pace, yet he made sure that he never overtook me, that he never burst through the door. That I appreciated, maybe the one inch of kindness that he had inside his body was enabling him to do this. I pictured it like that anyway, it was probably just something practical. That man knew no kindness.

I wanted to force myself to blink. With each step forward, the footsteps drowned out and were replaced only with the voices of those… communists coming from across the hallway.

When I approached the door, my emotions were bordering on indescribable.

_It was a feeling, you know, Posadist, it’s one recognisable in most if not all Ideologies._

_But back then it was new and horrifying, the last parts of my humanity thawing away._

The words’ desire’ or ‘fury’ felt far too weak, it was something much greater than that, a ceremonial coming together of all of my parts.

_(Or breaking down)_

I already tasted blood when I touched the door handle.

There was nothing.

My brain had shattered.

I was only created to form the actions of my ideas.

The communists and their pretty faces turned to look at me. Their bright red eyes, headlights piercing greater than any light I had ever seen.

The AuthRight screamed something again, and the frenzy started.

I was shooting at the red figures, recklessly.

I aimed at their eyes, their legs and chest.

Bodies tumbled on the floor, their red flesh, red blood, red carpet merging into a stream.

Everything was blurring together. There were piles of skin just forming around this empty conference room.

After ages of feeling nothing but pain, this was release.

Blood filled my mouth and my mind.

No thoughts entered my head.

Only empty reactions, impulses which had come from somewhere unknown.

Many of them were cowering, hiding in the corners of this room.

There was no escape from me.

I was running over their bodies only to have to scrape their frayed muscles off my boots.

Fear. Fear. Everywhere.

My power, my sheer forced, exercised.

I wanted to be the icon of horror.

I was determined to leave no survivors.

I was determined to…

I had not realised who had entered the room until I was knocked over and pushed against the floor.

As I laid with my victims, the greatness of praxis fading from my sense, I could see and notice Tankie, my Tankie, walking in casually. _Had he been listening, here the whole time?_ He stood with his arms folded as if he was surveying the damage of a building.

He sighed before walking over to Nazi. I stayed there, motionless, worrying if Tankie was thinking of worse ways to hurt me. It was as if I wanted to hide but this quarter blue-ish coloured figure was nothing but a sitting duck amongst a sea of red.

What I had just done was only vaguely going through my head. I had no idea if these people – ideologies were dead or not. Some of them must have sustained fatal wounds, some of them must have been already healing.

It was dawning on me, what senseless disturbing shit I had done.

_Was it good?_

_All the parts of my brain still tell me different things._

Tankie had Nazi pinned up against the wall by his neck. I saw him pressing on it, harder and harder and then dropping him and Nazi too. Nazi was breathing heavily spluttering, enough for me even on the other side of the room. Tankie then grabbed one of his shoulders while placing his head on his neck, bending it backwards, so far back that you’d think that it might split! Fall of his head!

Nazi made no sound at all but fell over almost immediately. Tankie kicked him in the stomach before leaving him.

He grinned, Tankie, as he walked over to me.

I had never seen him grin like this, Tankie rarely smiled, but all the times he had done so to me had been to express enthusiasm. I remembered that Tankie had been proud of me. Now he had hated me.

I would have asked for forgiveness, some comfort perhaps.

I found myself unable to speak.

_He never would have listened anyway._

He could have been wanting to do anything to me with a smile like that, tear my head off entirely, rip me open and use my corpse as fertiliser but all he did was pick me up.

I was in his arms, lying hopeless.

He tutted at me. “Oh, Comrade, Comrade, or shouldn’t I call you that anymore? You’ve done something quite troublesome, haven’t you?”

The sarcasm in his voice made my stomach turn. I felt myself drifting away, fainting.

-

When I had awoken, Tankie was still carrying me through my sleepy eyes, I could vaguely recognise where we were. A place of silvery buildings. Metal uselessness.

I had no idea how long the trip had taken, as long as Tankie had wanted it to, I gathered. Just long enough to have me wake up and look at him just as he was about to leave me.

_Manipulative bastard._

“We could have been comrades, you know, for real. I thought you would have liked that?”

With a little bit of regained strength, I was able to speak again, “Uh, I think so, I think I must have “–

Before I had finished my sentence, I was thrown down onto the floor.

“I’m taking you back to where you belong, Comrade, I should have never let you leave this place.”

I breathed the air, equally as cold as it was before. The taste of blood inside my mouth was still fresh, but all of my motivation had left me.

I was freezing cold here and without protection, nearly throwing up from the putrid contrast.

 _We could have been comrades, couldn’t we?_ He was right, no matter how long this would have taken, we could have been companions after all this. We could have supported each other. Lived our vaguely infinite lives together with simplicity, but that didn’t happen.

 _Ready to be my true ally?_ I think that was in part, at least, true too. It was an alliance in something that I found abhorrent, yet necessary, but at the same time, it was someone that was there for me, some form of guidance. I would have had someone there for me at least, and perhaps a place to live.

Both of those options were better than… better than this.

I still hadn’t worked what I had done. Whether it was good or bad, it didn’t make sense. There a distinct sense of relief, unwanted relief.

_The human self, it’s still here, it emerges with self-hatred._

_The conflict between my needs and consciousness still isn’t over, Posadist._

Tankie was far away from me now, a red dot, much like the how those other Communists looked when we were on the top of that pretty forestland that was now so distant to me, as distant as I wanted it to be. Far from my memories and far from my mind.

I didn’t deserve to go back to a place I didn’t belong.

I didn’t deserve to be with people I didn’t belong with either.

I was alone, and I would always be alone.

As I should have been.

_As I should be._

The little flag with the weird gold symbols made a bit more sense to me now. It wasn’t Tankie’s flag, it was something else, it was mine, it was all mine.

Whilst I was lying there, I looked at it, waving in the wind. It must have been waving like that for a long time, much longer than I had been around. It had been without an icon, a supporter in so long. It was also alone here.

I couldn’t move, perhaps Tankie had injured me just enough to make it, so I was immobile. So that I wouldn’t run back to him. He wanted to trap me, and this was somehow the best idea he had.

Neither of them wanted me.

Not as an ideology, or as a person.

I could have felt rage, but I instead, burst out into tears.

There was a pain growing inside of me, not numbing but sharp.

It was not longing; it was something much worse.

I was alone. I was alone, and there no way out.

The blue from my skin had gone, replaced with the striking purple from before.

With the little energy I had, I fell into the snow and sobbed into it.

I screamed to myself, only the cold set out in front of me.

I could no longer be blue like the so-called Identarian had wanted me to be, I had no chance to be red, that opportunity taken from me. I could only be purple. It was all I was left with.

_I still have to ask if I became a combination of those two: prophesied mentors, or if I was the parts that they rejected._

_A thrown-together juxtaposition, a creation of hate between two mutual enemies._

_Hatred, what a great feeling, isn’t it Posadist?_

I was left with hatred – that’s all. I could say that the last of my human self died in hatred too.

Hatred of what I had done, hatred in what I was becoming for what seemed like the endless amount of time that I was trapped here. Hatred in being alive at all, hatred in being alive in this state. Contradictory. Unbelonging.

_The worst part is, even as the World of Ideas assimilated me into Ideology form as you see now those feelings never went away._

_Contradictory._

_Unbelonging._

_I am the ultimate authority of nowhere._

_A strange, Ideology form at that, for those that were deemed dejected, strange by its foundation._

_I say my human self died in hatred, but maybe now they have become my hatred._

_A final reminder of how I came to be here, after so long of not a single other like me, a single other Nazbol being here._

That hatred swirled inside me it combined with sorrow, my experiences finalised, all other emotions drained. In its place a desire for complete power.

Not bloodshed, dominance, power, control, selfishness.

Me. There was only me. No other person or Ideology had or would ever share affection for me, association, friendship. I bit down as I held my tears in as I fought to accept that fact.

My war against the World of Ideas, I couldn’t give it up, even with my metaphorical dying breath.

The World of Ideas wanted me to belong to _it_ , but with that, it wanted me to belong to no one.

All I understood is that it wanted me to be a symbol of power and a symbol of power alone.

I bit my tongue enough so that the taste of the enemy’s blood was being drowned out by my own.

Despite this overwhelming power that was being realised in this vessel, I actually felt small, little, insignificant.

The power inside of this vessel was just it being made to become a part of something greater than itself.

A symbol of power and dominance, perhaps, but one that was supposed to be one of many.

_But the other Ideologies are all kinda afraid of me, aren’t they?_

_The World of Ideas knew how so alone I was in my unbelonging, it gave me what it must have thought was a gift._

_I was given the power of many, so so many that couldn’t fill their roles by being here._

I was too busy fighting off my weaknesses, sorrow and hatred that I could barely notice the other changes happening to me: my fingernails growing into dark talons and digging into the ground, my teeth sharpening to a fine and lethal point. I couldn’t even tell how my eyes changed, how the vision in them extended and became like homing missiles – not that I would have known, my blurry face full of snow.

It lasted long enough, to a point where my tears had all dried up and become laughter. Where I had pushed down enough of my hatred to make it pride. Where my coat had started protecting me from the cold again and had come as much a part of my formation as these new claws or fangs.

I stopped laughing and got to my feet, taking in the surroundings of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Posadist's story!!  
> This chapter also took a while to come out because of the length!!  
> To anyone reading: thank you with staying with me through this so far, I appreciate your readership!
> 
> Title Update: 'Insect that shuns the Light' (coming from the Latin name for 'Cockroach') seems like a much better title in terms of how it relates to the story, I'll keep both for now, however, just to prevent confusion.


	8. Interlude 3: Allies

_Home._ Posadist thought. He was almost so deep in thought that he didn’t notice Nazbol standing behind him, holding both of his former antennae in his fist.

Posadist breathed a sigh of relief. He looked around at his surroundings, and it was if, for the first time, things made sense. He could now just walk around freely about the extra sensors at the top bumping into everything and sending him into overdrive. He had been free of the things for one maybe two minutes at most, but the environment around him had already seemed to change.

He noticed how his room actually had more space than he released, which made sense considering he was no longer ‘touching’ one of his objects of furniture that was actually almost a foot away from him. Even with Nazbol right above him, the area felt very open, perhaps a little empty in places, but not in a bad way.

It was as if he could _feel_ the potential that used to be hidden away from him because he would feel those empty spaces as if they were full. Now he could fill them with something, something Posadist actually wanted there. Or perhaps just keep them empty, hoping that this feeling of liberation might last.

_Home._ Posadist kind of had two homes now. His little metal house-ship was now feeling more like a home than ever, but the nuclear wasteland was still a home in a way. Like Nazbol, it was the place he had first found himself in the World of Ideas. It was a warm place, very warm, a perfect match for an alien that thrived off the heat and especially the heat of destruction. He would go there for a visit but also turn away from it after not too long unable to cope with his old memories playing with his head. He had always wanted to take a nap there, just sleep, dream and feel as warm as ever whilst doing so. His wings, antenna had always made that difficult though, maybe without them, he could finally get some sleep there. It had been the place he had woken up, and despite the strange awakening, it had been one of the most comfortable nights of sleep he’s ever had.

Posadist was just looking ahead, unblinking until Nazbol threw his antennae onto the same side-table as his wings. Now that corner of the room appeared drenched in blood. Heck, it had more of the neon liquid than Posadist’s (former) mirror and desk. Posadist couldn’t say that Nazbol hadn’t left his mark on the room.

“Soooo, that was it. Everything that happened. Everything important anyway, the stuff that happened after that doesn’t really matter. Well, I suppose I could end it by saying that I came here.”

Nazbol grinned at Posadist. He looked genuinely happy after Posadist had heard him panicking as he recalled the last of his story. It almost made him feel guilty that he couldn’t try and comfort Nazbol, but he couldn’t exactly reach up and gently hug him, especially with a cleaver halfway through part of his head.

“You say that as if you were happy to come here?” Posadist as

“Well, I’m totally not unhappy! And, ugh, to be honest, nobody else has ever sat and listened to me like that before. I got to talk about a bunch of shit that I’ve only been able to say in my own head for god knows how long. Saying this all felt selfish… but I think that’s just because that’s how I see everything that I do.”

“You weren’t selfish.”

“Me? Nah, I dumped all this on you. It was kinda selfish. But, you know, at least I did something for you whilst I was rambling… I wouldn’t suggest standing up for a while, by the way.”

Posadist looked down. “I won’t. You say, you were… betrayed by both of them, and that’s what made you…”

Nazbol tipped his head back and forth. “It was a mixture of things, partly their betrayal, partly my feelings of their betrayal. Yeah, the transformation into an Ideology, once it starts, it doesn’t stop, but I’m not sure to what extent it demands you to become a certain Ideology. The environment at least has some influence, I think…”

Posadist looked down so low he hung his head. He had gone from missing Trotskyist to feeling weirdly vengeful towards him. If his power had the influence to at least try and change the course of Posadist’s development, why didn’t he? Trotskyist could have probably passed for a human too, he didn’t even have any pointed teeth to show off.

If Trotskyist had known a way to stop Posadist’s torment with a few words then why didn’t he? He didn’t even spend that long in the wasteland, so the environmental change had already happened. Surely, adverting this wouldn’t have been easy…

But, no, Posadist couldn’t get angry, not now, not when his life was in the midst of changing for the better, and all because of Nazbol for some reason.

Still, he had to listen to Nazbol’s story too, and it almost seemed like they went through the same thing, it could have just been projection but… he couldn’t help but start questioning Trotskyist now. His intent had seemed so genuine back then, but now it seemed he could have just been like ‘Nazi’ or ‘Tankie’. Maybe all the other Ideologies were just like that. At least Nazbol seemed aware of his inherent selfishness.

“Right, betrayal, I know I know.” Posadist sighed to keep himself from crying. “You know when you said, you thought you’d be alone forever, because of how you are…”

“Uh, what about that?” Nazbol stepped backwards and almost appeared to blush.

“I guess we’re together in the same room, and uh, I’ve listened to you and stuff and, like, not judged you?” Posadist felt himself growing flush too, odd for someone who was usually warm with radioactive energy.

Nazbol gasped. “You say that like I’m not alone anymore!”

Posadist let out a small nervous laugh. “I guess you’re not, not literally alone anyway.”

“Awh. Is that all you meant?”

“I mean, uh, do you want to join the wackies, Nazbol? I think that I - we, we would like someone like you here.” Posadist cleared his throat and tried not to fall from the chair. “You seem to be someone who could be of great use to our team. It sounds kind of like one of those alliances that you seemed to want at some point?”

“Oh boy, do I fucking want to join you?!” The red blush disappeared from Nazbol’s face as sent Posadist a beaming smile.

Posadist smiled back, half-genuinely.

Without another word, Nazbol ran over to hug Posadist, who was still sitting in that chair, slumped over and half dizzy from his lack of coordination. Missing what was supposed to be half your limbs, however unwanted, would do that.

Posadist was kind of shocked at Nazbol’s reaction. He knew the guy was desperate for some kind of affection, but he didn’t know he was just that desperate. Desperate enough to go running at someone who just allowed him to be part of his ‘group’. Nazbol must have not had much if any kind of emotional contact in his Ideology life. Posadist wondered when was the last time Nazbol had a hug. This was probably the first hug he had gotten since he came here. Posadist wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that, he supposed that he was kind of doing a good deed.

Someone had to be there for Posadist. There was still a bit of humanity left inside of him as he described, so of course, he would get lonely sometimes, and if someone had to be there for Nazbol, Posadist wouldn’t mind it if it was him.

“Yeah, uh, you can be a wacky now, with us!”

Nazbol seemed to want to squeeze Posadist to a pulp with just how tightly he was hugging him. He must have just been that overwhelmed that he seemed to forget that Posadist was wrapped in bandages and still bleeding from various bright orange wounds.

“For sure?”

Posadist tried to gently push Nazbol away. Although likely a little offended, he did back away.

“Yes, for sure, I’m not gonna revoke this or nothing… you deserve it.”

Despite being pushed aside, Nazbol was still glowing, as if nothing inside of him was bitter anymore. The man had seemed like a well of tension when he had first entered Posadist’s hideout. It had seemed like an excited energy at first, but then Posadist realised it was much more of a nervous energy. Posadist thought back, counting many of the random jitters that Nazbol had when he was cutting off the wings and the antenna. The way he held onto the sharp materials with a great force to prevent them from slipping or just to hide his innate urge for violence.

As Nazbol looked back at Posadist now, it seemed as if he had lost tension in his posture. His shoulders slumped, his palms open. There was even a small twinkle in his red and blue eyes.

Posadist smiled back at him, comfortable in his decision to give Nazbol somewhere he could belong. He did for a second or two, anyway, as a line of blood started running down his head, obviously from the recent amputation.

Nazbol also quickly noticed this and immediately started looking around for something to cover Posadist’s head with. He had already used the bedsheets. There wasn’t enough cloth on the pillow itself, so what else… 

_Scratch._ Posadist jumped, nearly falling over again. Nazbol had dug his talons into his own coat. The scraping of the claw against the old material was almost ear-piercing. It wasn’t one steady rip down the material to slice in half, but rather agonising minutes as the threads came undone from one another. The blood that was falling from Posadist’s hair had reached all the way down to the bottom of his face.

By the end, there was very little of the left side of the coat left – around half a sleeve or so which still rested on Nazbol’s arm. Nazbol folded the material and pressed it against the bleeding areas where Posadist’s antenna had been. After most of it had been cleaned up, Posadist wrapped the material around his head to stop any further bleeding. He pulled the last remaining sleeve and used it to clean up the blood that had gotten onto Posadist’s face before throwing it onto the pile of ‘medical waste’ that was Posadist’s unwanted limbs.

“There! I’m sure you feel like a new Ideology. Wait! I’m sure you feel like a new person.” Nazbol nodded.

Posadist had forgotten what it had felt like, everything just seeming _right._ There was no other way to describe it, _right._

He wanted to look behind him and just see what he looked like, hoping it would be closer to how he remembered that he used to look. How he desperately wanted to see himself, but he had broken his mirror, thus if he did, he would only see a broken and shattered image. Posadist was hesitant, he didn’t want to look back at a broken image of himself when he didn’t feel broken anymore.

“Nazbol?” Posadist asked.

“Hm?”

“Do you mind grabbing one of those other mirror shards, I need to look at myself.”

“Of course!”

Nazbol leaned over Posadist and grabbed the largest shard out of the mirror that he could. Posadist didn’t even have to duck this time. Posadist taking up less space, Nazbol being more graceful and considerate with his movements.

“Here you go, Posadist!”

Nazbol handed him the mirror shard, and Posadist was able to look at himself. Sure, his face was still mostly bright red, his eyes still bright orange colour, his teeth were still massive and carnivorous looking, but it was affirming for him to just not see the antenna sticking out of his head. He wasn’t who he used to be, but this was close enough.

He had to feel like an Ideology or heck, even an alien sometimes.

This was one of the better options he could get. He was rather content with it, for now.

After looking at his dazzling new self in the mirror, Posadist looked over to the heap of body parts that were now just left aside. _We have to get rid of this._

Posadist remembered that image of what was almost a great furnace over in the Nuclear Wasteland where he had first awoken. He could easily gather up all these wasted body parts and toss them. They would singe away eventually, even if it took some time. Posadist had been built to survive these places. 

_Where else would he put it though?_ He couldn’t just throw it in a pin somewhere, not only would that be disgusting but he couldn’t imagine his old body parts lying in a landfill would go well. Cleansing them slowly, with nuclear fire just felt right to him.

He handed the mirror back over to Nazbol.

“And?” Nazbol asked.

“And… and I think you’ve done right.”

“Done? Right? Like, done a good job? I did a good job?”

“Right like, I am a new person… I’m far closer to how I _should_ be. You’ve made this crazy little Ideology into who they should be. That’s quite an achievement, oh Nazbol!”

“I’ll add this to my achievement list then!” Nazbol laughed, and Posadist found himself laughing with him.

Whilst he was laughing, Posadist’s eyes kept moving toward the door. He was longing to just pick up that half of his old body and run out the door with it – never seeing it again. Then he remembered that his coordination had gotten terrible.

It would recover with time, yes, but for the moment, Posadist likely couldn’t walk in a straight line without tripping. Not to mention that all the layers of make-shift bandages would probably make walking more difficult too.

Even if he only wanted to walk a short distance, it would still be a struggle. If he wanted to go anywhere, he would regrettably, have to ask Nazbol for help, but the more and more he thought about it, the more it didn’t sound like a bad idea.

Posadist thought he would be uncomfortable asking anyone for help, especially Nazbol but the Ideology he thought was once so wild and petty had more responsibility than he thought. He never thought Nazbol would be one of the few Ideologies with self-awareness and heck, a distress detachment from what he was supposed to stand for vs who he was. If there was anybody who understood where Posadist had come from, it had to be him. Perhaps, he could take this chance, a journey back to where everything started, a chance to finally tell someone who would listen to how he got here.

It seemed perfect, a little too perfect. Posadist wondered if he was being too trusting already. He had already let Nazbol become Wacky without thinking about it too much.

There was no reason not to take the risk.

“Hey, Nazbol? Do you think we could get rid of those?” Posadist gestured over to the blood-ridden table.

Nazbol blinked. “Uh, well, yes?”

“I have an idea where I need to go, but I’m going to need help walking over there to do it.”

“Aw, you want me to help you up, don’t you Posadist?”

Posadist just nodded and didn’t say anything else.

“Ah, well, I can, don’t you worry about that Posadist!”

Nazbol picked up the still bloody limbs and threw them over the sleeve of his coat that still belonged to him. Then he took a step closer and leant out both his hands for Posadist to grab – allowing him to stand up without collapsing on the floor from lack of physical aid.

“How’s that? Standing up and all?”

“It’s great, perfect, thank you”

The two of them started to amble towards the door when Posadist looked Nazbol in the eye, almost glaring. “Say, Nazbol, would you be willing to hear one of my stories? Since you’ve told me yours?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up to over 30k now and only four chapters left!
> 
> If you missed the message in the last chapter: 'insect that shuns the light' was the title I came up with after I posted coming from the scientific name for 'Cockroach'. I guess you can work out why it works as a metaphor!


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